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THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/childsunconsciouOOIaywiala 


THE 

CHILD'S   UNCONSCIOUS 
MIND 

THE  RELATIONS  OF 

PSYCHOANALYSIS  TO  EDUCATION 
A  Book  for  Teachers  and  Parents 


BY 

WILFRID  LAY,  Ph.D. 

Author  of  "Man's  UnconBcious  Conflict' 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1920 


COPYRIOHT,  1919 
By  DODD.  MEAD  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


PBINTED  IN   THE  V.   S,   A. 


.p 


LICffAR^ 


L3C 


SANTA  BAlUiAaA 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

PACE 

I 

Introduction        .... 

I 

II 

The  Unconscious  Factor  . 

13 

III 

Interplay  of  Conscious  and  Uncon 

- 

SCIOUS 

49 

IV 

The  Partial  Trends   . 

89 

V 

The  Mechanisms  .       .       .       . 

99 

VI 

The  Aim  of  Education 

172 

VII 

Resistance  and  Transference  . 

248 

VIII 

Emotion 

.     282 

IX 

Conclusion.    Medical  Origin  . 

321 

Index      ...... 

327 

THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 


THE    CHILD'S    UNCONSCIOUS 
MIND 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION 

A  DEEPER  knowledge  than  ever  before  is  now  possible 
concerning  the  nature  of  the  child,  and  with  it  the  nature 
of  the  problems  of  education.  By  virtue  of  the  new 
knowledge  education  becomes  more  nearly  a  science  than 
it  has  been  in  the  past.  The  new  knowledge  is  a  knowl- 
edge of  a  hitherto  unexplored,  or  at  least  unsuccessfully 
explored,  stratum  of  the  mind,  as  evident  in  the  child  as 
in  the  adult,  and  in  the  child  more  controllable  than  in 
the  adult,  because  more  fluent,  less  fixed  and  crystallized. 
We  knew  that  children  were,  in  general,  more  educable 
than  adults.  Now  we  know  the  true  cause  why,  and 
also  why  some  children  are  more  educable  than  others, 
and  why  some  children  do  better  in  school  than  others, 
or  learn  as  easily  in  school  as  they  do  in  life. 

The  method  of  the  newer  psychology,  which  is  that 
of  modern  science,  is  the  formation  and  working  out 
of  an  hypothesis,  testing  it  daily  with  all  the  phenomena 
that  do  not  fit  into  older  hypotheses,  and  ultimately  giv- 
ing it  up,  if  another  theory  more  inclusive  is  found.  The 
hypothesis  adopted  in  the  newer  psychology,  which  is  that 


2        THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

tentatively  presented  here  as  a  basis  for  a  newer  science 
of  education,  is  the  hypothesis  that  the  unconscious  por- 
tion of  each  human  mind,  child  or  adult,  is  an  activity 
which  plays  an  extremely  important,  if  not  an  exclusively 
controlling,  role  in  the  life  of  every  individual. 

The  results  of  a  scientific  method  of  testing  this  hy- 
pothesis leave  nothing,  so  far,  to  be  desired.  Language 
alone  is  found  defective,  at  times,  to  give  a  universally 
comprehensible  account  of  the  conclusions  which  are 
reached.  But  it  is  the  behef  of  the  present  writer  that 
so  much  of  value  for  education,  so  much  that  is  almost 
imperative  for  parents  and  teachers,  and  even  older  chil- 
dren to  take  into  account,  has  been  recently  discovered, 
that  it  is  quite  time  for  an  attempt  to  be  made  to  put 
this  new  point  of  view  before  all  those  concerned  in  the 
bringing  up  of  children.  And  at  no  previous  time  in  the 
history  of  mankind  has  there  been  so  great  a  need  for 
radical  knowledge  of  mankind  as  in  a  time  following 
almost  universal  war. 

The  object-matter  of  the  newer  knowledge  is  infin- 
itely broader  than  any  ever  studied  by  the  same  methods 
before.  I  say  by  the  same  methods,  because  the  existence 
of  unconscious  mental  activity  has  been  guessed  for  ages, 
and  human  conduct  has  always  been  motivated  by  the 
unconscious  desires;  but  no  conscious  cognizance  has  been 
taken  of  it  except  in  a  very  Indefinite  and  unproductive 
way 

The  object-matter  of  the  newer  knowledge  is  the 
human  organism  and  Its  modes  of  functioning,  includ- 
ing the  unconscious  thoughts  upon  which  before  the  pres- 
ent time  no  really  scientific  observations  have  been  made. 
Whether  we  regard  the  human  organism,  with  the  acts 


INTRODUCTION  3 

and  thoughts  which  express  its  functioning,  as  purely 
physical  or  purely  psychical  seems  to  me  to  make  no  dif- 
ference, if  we  suppose,  as  we  must,  that  the  same  nat- 
ural laws  are  found  to  exist  in  both.  There  do  appear, 
to  be  sure,  activities  which  seem  predominantly  physical, 
but  it  would  be  difficult  or  impossible  to  think  away  the 
mental  element  of  such  activities;  and  there  are  activities 
which  are  apparently  purely  mental,  but  it  is  impossible 
to  believe  that  they  are  really  entirely  disconnected  from 
what  we  call  physical  conditions. 

As  examples  of  what  might  be  taken  as  purely  physi- 
cal, because  not  apparently  caused  by  any  conscious 
thoughts,  there  are  the  instinctive  acts,  to  which  we  do 
not  attribute  any  consciousness  in  animals,  because  we 
do  not  notice  any  in  ourselves.  Mention  will  be  made 
later  of  the  instincts  under  two  heads  of  self-preserva- 
tive and  race-preservative. 

The  modes  of  functioning  of  the  human  organism, 
taken  in  toto  as  both  mental  and  physical  at  the  same, 
time,  and  as  including  both  their  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious manifestations,  may  be  regarded  descriptively 
and  dynamically.  But  the  description  of  a  state  and  the 
narration  of  an  act  are  both  needed  in  the  account  of 
any  human  condition  at  any  time.  I  shall  be  very  little 
concerned  with  the  descriptive  end  of  this  matter,  ex- 
cept in  so  far  as  previous  psychology  may  have  been  in- 
adequate in  its  account.  The  current  conceptions  of  the 
senses,  of  perception  and  of  the  emotions  may  have  to 
be  added  to,  in  order  to  include  the  unconscious  in  the 
reckoning. 

The  problem  of  education  in  general,  whether  aca- 
demic or  other,  cannot  be  adequately  solved  without  in- 


4        THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

'  eluding  consideration  of  the  unconscious,  and  the  means 
of  education  in  schools  will  have  to  be  amplified  in  order 
to  take  in  this  factor  which  is  now  almost  universally 
ignored  or  "  wished  onto  "  fate. 

The  specific  problems  are  those  which  touch  at  the 
present  time,  and  with  the  present  school  equipment  and 
management,  the  relations  between  the  work,  the  child, 
the  teacher  and  the  parent.  In  this  we  deal  with  con- 
crete realities  and  interests  which  are,  from  whatever 
angle  viewed,  admittedly  vital. 

The  Point  of  View 

/  In  order  to  get  the  point  of  view  of  the  most  modern 
/  analytic  psychology,  a  view  from  an  angle  from  which 
education  has  so  far  been  very  little  regarded,  it  will  be 
necessary  for  the  reader  to  accept  the  fundamental  pos- 
tulate of  the  newer  psychology  and  frankly  admit  the  ex- 
istence in  each  and  every  human  of  an  unconscious  (some- 
times called  subconscious  and  sometimes  co-conscious) 
.mentality.  This  implies  not  only  that  each  one  of  us  has 
mental  states  that  never  enter  consciousness  but  also  that 
these  unconscious  mental  states  are  not  only  states  or  con- 
ditions or  dispositions,  arrangements  of  something  inert, 
,  but  are  activities,  energies  or  groups  of  forces  which 
are  operating  by  mechanisms  of  which  only  the  special 
student  knows  anything  definite  at  all.  The  ordinary 
person  knows  practically  nothing  of  the  detailed  working 
of  these  activities,  but  in  his  own  everyday  life  he  has 
frequent  examples  of  the  conscious  results  produced  by 
these  elaborate  and  complicated  mechanisms. 

If  we  do  not  know  the  least  thing  about  the  part  of  the 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  5 

mind  below  the  horizon  of  consciousness,  below  the  ter- 
restrial surface  above  which  alone  our  consciousness  is 
able  to  see  what  is  going  on  in  full  view,  yet  we  have  many 
times  wondered,  most  of  us,  what  is  beyond  that  visible 
horizon  or  what  is  the  nature  of  the  basis  on  which  our 
consciousness  sports  here  and  there,  like  an  animate  being 
on  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  on  which  we  build  our  mental 
and  intellectual  structures.  The  architect  of  a  real  build- 
ing knows  what  kind  of  soil  the  foundations  are  in,  and 
makes  different  arrangements,  according  to  whether  he  is 
building  on  sand  or  rock,  or  whether,  as  in  the  case  of 
a  well-known  New  York  City  hotel,  a  subterranean  river 
has  to  be  provided  with  an  artificial  course  under  the  sub- 
cellar. 

One  of  the  commonest  illustrations  of  the  flexibility  or 
fluidity  of  the  substratum  on  which  our  mental  life  is  built 
is  the  ordinary  everyday  blunder.*  When  such  a  blunder 
involves  loss  of  money  or  injury  to  person  or  property,  one 
frequently  hears  the  blunderer  repeat  to  himself :  "  I  can't 
imagine  how  I  ever  could  have  done  that!  What  power 
got  hold  of  me  to  make  me  so  careless  as  not  to  see  that 
that  very  thing  was  most  likely  to  happen  ?  " 

In  a  number  of  these  blunders,  particularly  where  there 
is  no  great  loss  of  any  kind,  the  operating  cause  of  the 
mistake  is  easily  seen,  and  most  people  will  readily  admit 
that  it  is  caused  by  an  unconscious  desire  or  tendency  to  do 
the  very  thing  that  was  done,  or  leave  undone  the  very 
thing  that  one  forgets  to  do. 

A  person  makes  an  engagement  with  another  person, 

*  A  careful  study  of  almost  any  blunder  shows  first  that  an  activity  is 
responsible  for  it,  an  activity  with  which  our  familiar  consciousness  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do. 


6        THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

but  does  not  really  wish  to  keep  the  appointment.  He 
either  forgets  it,  or  absent-mindedly  puts  himself  in  a 
position  where  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  keep  it.  For 
instance,  with  the  conscious  purpose  of  taking  dinner 
with  a  friend  in  a  suburb,  I  get  ready  and  go  down  to  the 
station  and  find  either  that  I  have  missed  the  last  train 
which  would  get  me  there  In  time  for  dinner,  or,  by  some 
unaccountable  (?)  mental  freak,  have  left  my  money  and 
my  check  book  at  home.  With  conscious  irritation  but 
with  unconscious  satisfaction  I  give  it  up,  and  go  back  to 
my  real  interests.  That  is,  if  I  have  not  totally  forgotten 
the  engagement  or  misplaced  it  mentally  to  the  follow- 
ing day,  also  a  common  error. 

A  blunder  of  my  own  shows  in  an  unmistakable  way 
the  operation  of  the  unconscious  wish. 

I  went  to  a  department  store  and  bought  $27.47  worth 
of  goods  and  asked  to  have  them  charged  to  my  deposit 
account.  After  reaching  home  I  was  informed  by  my  wife 
that  she  had  used  it  up  and  I  had  but  a  dollar  or  so  on 
deposit  there.  I  immediately  wrote  a  check  for  $30.00 
and  mailed  it,  on  the  supposition  that  they  would  send  the 
goods  with  a  note  stating  that  I  had  overdrawn.  Instead 
they  sent  the  goods  collect  on  delivery.  I  asked  the  driver 
if  he  could  take  a  check.  As  he  consented,  I  left  him  at 
the  door,  wrote  a  check  to  R.  H.  Mercer  &  Company, 
for  $27.47  and  handed  it  to  the  driver.  He  looked  at  it 
to  see  if  it  was  correct,  put  it  in  his  book,  receipted  the 
bill  and  departed.  The  next  day  a  special  messenger  came 
from  Mercer's  with  the  check,  and  asked  if  I  had  re- 
ceived the  goods  and  had  written  that  check.  I  had  not 
signed  it!  Why?  Unconsciously  I  had  not  wished  to 
pay  twice  or  even  to  do  anything  that  looked  like  paying 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  7 

twice.  I  should  have  been  much  surprised,  and  possibly 
annoyed  at  myself,  had  I  been  unacquainted  with  the  fact 
that  wishes  play  so  important  a  part  in  the  actions  of 
every  one  of  us.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  at  the  time  I 
was  totally  unaware  that  I  had  not  signed  the  check.  I 
never  should  have  supposed  that  with  a  driver  from  a 
large  New  York  store  I  could  get  away  with  a  trick  like 
that. 

This  unconscious  omission  on  my  part  is  a  very  good 
example  of  an  omission  caused  by  the  unconscious  part  of 
my  personality.  This  unconscious  factor  is  an  element  in 
the  constitution  of  every  normal  human  mind.  Its  nature 
is  described  in  one  word :  desire.  It  constantly  desires  my 
superiority  to  my  fellow-men  in  all  the  relations  of  life. 
It  has  been  compared  to  a  current  of  power  which  is  for- 
ever flowing  and  ready  to  be  applied  to  any  purpose  for 
which  the  human  body  is  a  suitable  machine.  But  it  lives 
on  the  gratification  which  comes  from  the  worsting  of  any 
contestant,  and  in  a  certain  sense  everything  with  which 
and  everyone  with  whom  I  come  in  contact  is  taken  by  it 
as  a  possible  or  actual  rival.  It  feeds  on  a  feeling  of 
power  which  it  gets  by  making  me  overcome  or  outwit 
my  adversaries.  If  I  do  not  think  of  this  or  that  man  as 
an  opponent,  my  unconscious  factor  does,  and  makes  me 
unconscious  for  a  brief  moment.  Of  course  I  was  uncon- 
scious to  a  small  degree  when  I  forgot  to  sign  my  name  to 
that  check.  I  was  not  in  a  complete  trance,  nor  did  I  faint. 
So  was  the  driver  unconscious  when  he  looked  at  the 
check  and  forgot  to  note  that  it  was  unsigned.  Neither 
did  he  faint  nor  fall  in  a  trance.  He  simply  did  not  see 
that  the  check  had  no  signature,  although  every  part  of  the 
check  was  making  an  impression  on  his  eye.    His  brain 


8        THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

was  working  too.  Possibly  the  unconscious  of  the  driver 
also  had  its  reasons  for  wishing  not  to  see  that  the  check 
was  imperfect.  He  may  have  been  tired,  or  he  may  have 
had  a  grudge  against  his  employer.  The  failure  to  see  was 
purely  mental.  So  is  the  failure  of  almost  all  of  us  purely 
mental  when  we  do  not  see  an  error  in  a  printed  page. 
If  a  letter  is  left  out  we  see  it  though  it  is  not  there. 
If  I  saw  a  person  in  my  room  though  he  was  not  there,  we 
should  rightly  call  this  vision  of  mine  an  hallucination. 
The  psychologists  call  the  failure  to  see  a  real  object  a 
negative  hallucination. 

Why  did  I  not  sign  the  check?  I  was  not  well  pleased 
to  have  my  order  changed  from  deposit  account  to  collect 
on  delivery.  I  did  not  intend  to  keep  even  $30.00  on 
deposit  at  Mercer's,  and  really  did  not  want  to  take  the 
trouble  either  to  write  to  them  for  a  check  or  to  go  in 
person  to  draw  out  the  money.  So  I  made  a  worthless 
check.  Every  mistake  ever  made  can  be  explained  in  the 
same  way.  Every  action  that  we  do  is  done  clearly  be- 
cause we  have  a  motive  for  doing  it,  a  wish  to  do  it. 
Similarly  every  act  that  we  omit  doing  has  equally  a  wish 
behind  it,  a  wish  not  to  do  that  very  thing. 

No  soldier  is  excused  for  omission  of  a  duty  because  he 
forgot  it.  It  is  the  same  in  love  as  in  war.  Rosalind  in 
As  You  Like  It  expresses  the  principle  that  a  failure  to 
do  a  thing  is  on  account  of  a  wish  not  to  do  it,  in  the  fol- 
lowing words:  "  Break  an  hour's  promise  in  love!  He 
that  will  divide  a  minute  into  a  thousand  parts,  and  break 
but  a  part  of  the  thousandth  part  of  a  minute  in  the  affairs 
of  love,  It  may  be  said  of  him  that  Cupid  hath  clapped 
him  o'  the  shoulder,  but  I'll  warrant  him  heart-whole." 

In  the  case  of  the  check  unsigned,  which  is  the  case  of 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  9 

forgetting  to  write  a  letter  of  apology,  or  to  post  a  letter 
already  written,  or  to  return  a  book  or  an  umbrella,  the 
wish  is  transparent  enough,  when  once  called  to  our  atten- 
tion. But  it  was  an  unconscious  wish,  or  a  wish  of  which 
we  were  at  the  time  unconscious.  It  is  the  same  with  any- 
one who  has  "  builded  better  than  he  knew."  His  uncon- 
scious has  been  helping  him. 

Another  amusing  mistake,  which  I  made  and  which  very 
clearly  showed  what  I  really  wished  to  do,  is  as  follows. 
I  consciously  wished  to  get  up  one  morning  at  half-past 
six.  I  told  my  wife,  who,  without  my  knowledge,  set  the 
alarm  clock  for  that  hour.  Just  before  I  went  to  bed  my- 
self, I  went  to  the  alarm  clock,  with  the  conscious  purpose 
of  setting  it  to  ring  at  the  desired  hour.  I  took  the  clock 
from  the  shelf  where  it  was,  and  turned  it  around  to  see 
the  dial  where  the  hour  of  the  alarm  is  adjusted.  I  saw 
that  the  indicator  pointed  to  half-past  six.  So  far  so  good. 
I  then  looked  at  the  arm  which  stops  the  alarm  bell  from 
ringing  or  releases  it  so  that  it  can  ring  at  the  proper  time. 
It  actually  pointed  to  the  word  "  alarm,"  but  I  saw  only 
the  word  "  silent."  Unconsciously  I  must  have  made  the 
inference  that  because  I  saw  the  word  "  silent,"  therefore 
the  arm  was  set  for  silence,  because  what  I  did  was  to  turn 
it.  Mentally,  that  is  consciously,  at  the  time  I  thought 
that  I  was  setting  it  for  alarm,  though  I  really  turned  it 
off,  and  went  to  bed  with  a  perfectly  satisfied  conscious 
conscience.  Next  morning  I  slept  till  ten  minutes  of  seven 
and  awoke  with  a  start.  For  twenty  minutes  my  uncon- 
scious conscience  had  been  trying  to  wake  me  up  and  had 
succeeded  in  doing  so  at  such  a  time  as  to  enable  me  to 
make,  but  with  a  great  deal  of  hurry,  the  train  I  wished 
both  consciously  and  unconsciously  to  catch.    I  certainly 


lo      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

admire  the  skill  of  my  unconscious  in  thus  giving  me  a 
little  more  rest,  and  letting  me  get  the  train  just  the  same. 
What  I  really  wanted  to  do  was  just  what  I  did  do — 
namely,  sleep  a  little  longer,  and  catch  the  train  too.  No 
one  will  doubt  that  the  influence  of  the  unconscious  wish 
which  I  had  tried  to  repress  was  sufficient  to  blind  me  to 
the  real  positions  of  the  mechanisms  of  the  alarm  clock. 
If  I  had  been  asked,  just  after  turning  it  off,  whether  I 
had  set  the  alarm,  I  should  certainly  have  said  I  had  done 
so,  and  with  the  clearest  conscience. 

In  all  these  errors  it  is  quite  clear  that  there  was  a 
wish,  as  evident  as  the  wish-content  of  Rip  Van  Winkle's 
otherwise  irrelevant  statement  about  his  latest  drink: 
*'  Well,  I'll  not  count  this  one."  The  unconscious  so  suc- 
cessfully counts  out  a  great  many  things  which  it  wills  not 
to  do  or  to  reckon  or  to  notice,  that  the  things  themselves 
simply  do  not  occur  to  one's  mind.  And  if  they  do  not 
occur,  what  power  will  cause  us  to  do  those  things  ?  We 
may  write  them  down,  but  we  shall  forget  to  look  at  the 
memorandum.  We  may  get  another  person  to  remind  us 
of  them,  but  we  shall  either  not  hear  him,  or  not  listen  to 
him,  or  shall  reason  so  plausibly  to  ourselves  why  the 
whole  thing  is  off  anyway,  that  we  shall  feel  justified, 
even  consciously  for  a  while,  in  not  doing  it. 

A  rower  in  a  swift  tide  will  not  go  directly  across  the 
stream  if  he  goes  directly  across  the  current,  but  will 
strike  the  opposite  shore  some  distance  either  above  or 
below  the  point  opposite  which  he  started,  because  the  cur- 
rent carries  him  up  or  down.  If  a  mariner  knew  nothing 
about  the  Gulf  Stream  and  attempted  to  steer  across  the 
ocean,  he  might  land  hundreds  of  miles  from  his  purposed 
destination. 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  ii 

So  in  Ignorance  of  the  trend  of  the  unconscious  we  do  j 
not  arrive  whither  we  aim,  and  we  make  all  sorts  of  \ 
excuses  for  not  doing  so.  But  excuses  or  no  excuses,  we 
are  forced  by  these  blunders  of  ours  to  see  that  we  are  to 
a  certain  extent  controlled  by  a  power  which  is  outside  of  f 
our  conscious  life.  It  is  not  outside  of  our  complete  mental 
life  any  more  than  the  current  is  outside  of  the  river  or 
the  Gulf  Stream  is  outside  of  the  ocean.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  current  of  the  river  is  no  more  intimately  a  part 
of  the  river  than  is  the  unconscious  a  part  of  my  mental 
life  as  a  whole.  If  we  swim  in  a  river  that  has  a  current, 
and  do  not  look  at  the  river  bank,  but  only  at  the  water 
near  us,  we  never  know  the  motion  of  the  current.  We 
learn  that  we  are  being  carried  several  miles  an  hour  by 
the  current  as  we  swim  in  it  only  after  looking  at  the  water 
and  the  river  bank  at  the  same  time.  In  the  modern 
analytic  psychology  we  have  a  means  of  seeing  and  esti- 
mating the  influence  of  the  mental  current  in  which  our 
consciousnesses  are  swimming.  The  analogy  of  many  con- 
sciousnesses swimming  in  the  current  of  one  river  is  not  so 
very  misleading,  either,  as  it  is  found  that  we  are  all  car- 
ried toward  the  same  goal  by  the  same  unconscious  trend. 

The  importance  of  the  new  viewpoint  which  includes 
both  consciousness  and  the  unconscious  is  as  vital  as  is 
the  necessity  that  the  navigator  should  allow  for  currents 
in  the  ocean  when  sailing  from  port  to  port.  And  as  the 
knowledge  of  the  modern  navigator  is  so  far  advanced  that 
the  pilot  of  today  can  cross  the  ocean  without  the  wastage 
of  a  mile,  so  the  modern  science  of  analytic  psychology 
has  superseded  the  older  doctrine  which  recognized  the 
dynamics  of  only  the  conscious  mentality.  For  the  vision 
into  the  lower  strata  of  the  mind  is  a  deeper  vision,  and 


12      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

makes  intelligible  much  of  what  was  paradoxical  before. 
For  instance,  it  has  shown  what  the  force  is,  and  how  it 
operates,  which  controls  that  association  of  ideas,  that 
topic  which,  in  the  mental  science  of  the  past,  caused  so 
much  dispute  and  produced  so  much  paradox. 

Recognizing,  then,  the  existence  and  the  elemental 
power  of  the  unconscious  portion  of  human  mentality,  we 
are  in  a  position  to  understand  the  simpler  of  its 
mechanisms  and  the  effects  produced  by  them  in  the  out- 
ward actions  and  words  of  our  fellow-beings. 

Summary 

The  deeper  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  the  individual, 
now  for  the  first  time  available  for  teacher  and  parent, 
takes  into  consideration  the  unconscious  mental  activities, 
and  a  knowledge  of  these  as  they  appear  in  the  child  is 
now  an  essential  part  of  the  equipment  of  all  who  hope 
to  do  the  best  work  in  the  bringing  up  of  the  young.  The 
ordinary  blunder  is  the  clearest  illustration  of  the  work- 
ing of  the  unconscious  wish. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    UNCONSCIOUS    FACTOR 

As  each  one  of  us  desires  to  develop  his  personality  to  the 
utmost,  and  as  the  recognition  of  the  existence  of  the 
unconscious  element  in  the  mind  as  a  whole  at  once  sug- 
gests a  comparison  between  it  and  the  conscious  element, 
it  is  a  natural  question  to  ask  what  kind  of  acts  are  the 
most  personal. 

What  Act  Is  Most  Personal? 

Which  of  our  acts  are  most  likely  to  be  regarded  by 
ourselves  as  most  our  own  ?  Are  they  those  which  are  the 
most  conscious  or  those  which  are  the  most  unconscious? 
I  think  no  one  will  hesitate  to  say  that  the  acts  which  we 
perform  in  a  state  of  semi-consciousness  are  but  half  ours, 
but  what  we  perform  with  the  most  intense  attention,  what 
in  that  sense  must  be  called  the  most  keenly  conscious  acts, 
are  those  which  we  would  be  most  likely  to  call  our  own. 
This  comes  to  the  same  thing  as  saying  that  our  conscious- 
ness is  the  most  real  part  of  us.  And  yet,  from  one  point 
of  view,  our  conscious  life,  in  which  we  seem  to  take  the 
greatest  amount  of  interest,  is  the  smallest  part  of  our 
mental  life.  I  dismiss  for  the  moment  the  question  of 
being  able  to  call  by  the  name  mental  what  is  not  conscious. 
Modern  psychology  goes  on  the  principle  that  it  is,  and 
that  no  proper  and  complete  account  can  be  given  of  the 

13 


14      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

whole  mental  life  which  does  not  give  acknowledgment 
to  the  unconscious. 

But  there  we  have  what  seems  to  be  a  dilemma.  What 
is  most  important  is  what  is  most  proper  to  the  ego,  and 
what  is  most  peculiarly  the  ego's  is  consciousness.  But 
when  compared  to  the  extent  and  the  depth  of  the  uncon- 
scious part  of  the  mind,  the  conscious  part  seems  most 
unimportant.  The  truth  is  that  the  two  parts  have  dif- 
ferent roles  in  the  drama  of  life,  and  that  life  would  be 
incomplete,  at  least  human  life  would,  without  both  of 
them.  Not  only  does  the  unconscious  mental  life  play  a 
great  role  in  the  adjustments  which  are  necessarily  made 
between  the  physical  organism  and  the  complexities  of 
modern  life,  in  causing  adaptations,  of  which  we  are 
never  conscious,  of  the  various  physiological  functions  to 
the  ever  changing  environment  of  the  life  of  today,  but 
the  unconscious  wishes  are  forever  causing  mental,  and 
purely  mental,  not  physiological,  changes  to  take  place 
in  our  minds,  of  whose  results  only  and  not  the  processes 
we  are  conscious. 

Not  only  do  we  eat  new  and  unaccustomed  foods,  to 
which  our  unconscious  powers  are  obliged  to  adjust  our 
digestive  apparatus,  but  we  are  fed  from  time  to  time 
upon  new  and  unaccustomed  mental  pabulum  which 
requires  a  change  in  our  attitude  towards  many  things. 
In  these  days  we  are  gradually  adapting  ourselves  mentally 
to  the  mental  atmosphere  of  a  nation  at  war.  The  sight 
of  multitudes  of  uniformed  men,  which  would  in  previous 
years  have  been  extremely  exciting  to  all  of  us,  is  now 
seen  with  quite  another  feeling,  which  has  been  produced 
in  us  by  a  great  many  circumstances  to  which  we  do  not 
consciously  attend,  and  yet  there  is  a  change,  and  a  great 


WE  ARE  MOST  WHAT  WE  MOST  DESIRE     15 

one,  which  has  taken  place,  in  our  hearts  we  call  it  in 
common  parlance.  The  sight  of  women  running  trolley 
cars  and  elevators  and  acting  as  ticket  choppers  on  street 
railway  systems,  although  we  do  not  make  much  conscious 
comment  on  it,  is  nevertheless  a  factor  in  the  total  change 
which  is  being  wrought  in  our  unconscious  mentality. 

We  Are  Most  What  We  Most  Desire 

In  one  sense  what  we  call  most  our  own  spir- 
itually is  what  we  have  consciously  desired  most 
and  most  earnestly  striven  to  secure  the  attainment 
of.  But  there  are  in  each  one  of  us  a  great  many 
desires,  and  strong  ones  too,  of  which  we  are  totally 
unconscious.  When,  after  a  certain  amount  of  study 
of  the  newer  wish  psychology,  we  come  to  realize 
how  great  and  how  strong  these  unconscious  desires  are, 
we  for  a  time  begin  to  think  that  those  are  really  the  most 
peculiarly  our  own  and  in  a  sense  ourselves,  our  real 
selves.  Frequently  what  we  have  consciously  most  desired 
we  find  after  its  attainment  giving  us  comparatively  little 
or  no  pleasure.  We  cease  to  want  many  things,  such  as 
riches,  when  once  we  have  got  them. 

If  what  we  most  desire  is  what  we  ourselves  most  are, 
then  the  converse  of  this  proposition  is  that  our  desires 
most  exactly  represent  us.  Now,  if  this  is  true  and  if  it 
is  also  true  that  the  greater  number  of  our  desires  are 
absolutely  unknown  to  us,  then  the  conclusion  naturally 
follows  that  of  ourselves  we  know  comparatively  little. 
It  is  only  the  superficial  conscious  desires  that  we  really 
know,  and  we  are  all  frequently  puzzled  by  their  apparent 
contradictions,  not  to  say  by  the  manifest  inability  of  some 


i6      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

persons  to  form  any  idea  of  why  they  want  this  or  that 
thing.  The  phenomenon  of  the  capricious  will  is  quite 
familiar  in  the  case  of  children.  They  are  expected  to 
wish  this  and  that  and  to  be  unable  to  say  why.  The 
modern  form  of  psychology,  sometimes  called  the  wish 
psychology,  has  given  an  answer  to  many  of  these  prob- 
lems. Its  answer  is  that  all  the  unconscious  wishes  are 
forms  of  the  creative  wish  for  reproduction,  and  that  the 
reason  why  they  have  been  forced  into  unconsciousness  is 
that  things  sexual  have  been  tabooed  in  many  civilizations. 
The  fact  that  these  desires  have  been  forced  into  uncon- 
sciousness accounts  for  the  fact  that  they  never  enter  con- 
sciousness except  under  disguise.  For  instance,  it  has  been 
repeatedly  shown  that  among  many  others  the  unduly 
strong  desire  to  smoke  tobacco  or  to  use  certain  kinds  of 
foods  is  a  compensation  for  certain  wishes  for  the  more 
direct  form  of  physical  creativeness  against  which  society 
has  set  up  a  strong  barrier,  and  the  unconscious,  groping 
like  a  blind  animal,  or  stretching  forth  like  a  blade  of 
grass  under  a  board  toward  the  light,  takes,  in  its  strug- 
gle, an  indirect  way  towards  gratification  instead  of  the 
most  direct  which  has  been  blocked. 

From  the  multitudinous  prohibitions  aimed  by  society 
at  the  exploitation  of  things  directly  sexual  has  come  a 
sort  of  idea,  partly  conscious  and  partly  unconscious  in 
the  minds  of  men  and  women  alike,  that  such  things  are 
wicked  or  sinful  or  at  least  dangerous.  It  is  called  play- 
ing with  fire,  with  the  implication  that  all  those  who  play 
with  fire  are  likely  to  be  burned,  furthermore  that  it  is  a 
bad  thing  in  every  way  to  be  burned.  A  state  of  society 
is  conceivable  in  which  such  a  fear  of  being  burned  did  not 
exist  and  in  which  therefore  there  would  be  plenty  of 


WE  ARE  MOST  WHAT  WE  MOST  DESIRE     17 

people  in  evidence  who  had  been  burned  and  been  dis- 
figured by  their  burns.  Now,  the  fact  is  that  in  avoiding 
the  one  kind  of  burns  we  are  suffering  another  kind. 
What  we  are  really  doing  is  exchanging  a  physical  for  a 
mental  burn.  There  is  an  absolute  law  of  the  conserva- 
tion of  energy  in  the  mental  as  well  as  in  the  physical 
world.  What  we  gain  in  the  way  of  physical  advantage 
by  our  constant  curbing  of  the  natural  instincts,  which  is 
the  name  which  we  have  given  to  the  primordial  urge 
toward  the  maintenance  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race, 
is  lost  in  mental  advantage.  For  the  absolutely  natural 
and  therefore  wholesome  instinct  of  the  girl  to  be  a 
mother  is  constantly  being  repressed  and  in  our  present 
civilization  is  in  many  cases  not  being  replaced  in  any 
way  by  a  socially  valuable  substitute. 

There  is  nothing  to  which  one  can  devote  his  or  her 
whole  heart,  to  use  the  common  expression,  which  does 
not  enlist  all  the  instincts  with  which  nature  has  so  gener- 
ously provided  us;  there  is,  in  short,  no  activity  available 
for  us  that  will  not  leave  some  of  the  instinctive  desire 
ungratified,  unless  it  enlists  the  whole  of  our  personality, 
including  the  unconscious  wishes  above  referred  to.  In 
other  words,  unless  we  can  find  something  to  do  which 
satisfies  our  conscious  desires,  which  we  have  seen  above 
to  be  at  best  whimsical  and  illogical,  and  at  the  same  time 
gratifies  in  some  substitutive  form  the  unconscious  wishes, 
which  are  a  very  great  proportion  of  the  motive  force  of 
all  human  action,  we  shall  not  be  working,  or  playing 
either  for  that  matter,  with  our  entire  available  energy, 
and  therefore  we  shall  be  working  at  cross-purposes  with 
ourselves. 

The  unconscious  wishes,  even  if  they  are  not  known 


1 8      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

and  taken  into  account,  are  nevertheless  wishes,  just  as 
strong  as  the  conscious  ones  if  not  much  stronger,  and 
are  operative  in  our  bodies  even  if  they  are  quite  outside 
of  our  ken.  The  net  result  in  many  instances  is  their 
counteracting  the  energy  of  the  conscious  wishes,  and 
nullifying  the  effect  of  the  latter.  That  is  the  explanation 
of  why  a  great  many  good  things  go  wrong,  and  a  great 
many  otherwise  good  men  too. 

Therefore,  we  can  return  to  our  first  question  as  to 
what  kind  of  deeds  are  the  most  personal.  If  it  is  a  matter 
of  mathematical  proportion,  such  that  we  could  say  that 
the  wishes  having  the  greatest  strength  or  the  greatest 
number  best  represented  the  personality  of  the  individual, 
we  should  be  in  a  position  to  say  that  the  most  conscious 
acts,  or  those  which  we  feel  most  consciously  desirous  of 
performing,  are  the  least  our  own.  They  are  the  fewest 
in  number  and  the  weakest  in  dynamics.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  unconscious  wishes,  those  indeed  which  the  con- 
scious personality  Is  constantly  striving  to  repress,  are  the 
ones  which  most  exactly  represent  what  we  really  are. 
Now,  if  this  is  the  case,  as  a  great  many  modern  psychol- 
ogists firmly  believe,  and  if  we  therefore  really  know  the 
smallest  part  of  our  true  nature,  it  would  seem  to  be  a 
great  advantage  If  we  should  be  so  trained  as  to  be  able  to 
learn  about  these  unconscious  wishes  and  learn,  too,  to  be 
able  to  control  them  to  our  own  advantage  and  profit. 
Our  present-day  education  gives  us  not  an  inkling  of  this 
dual  nature  of  our  everyday  mind.  Only  a  few  advanced 
scientists  have  taken  it  into  consideration.  Some  men 
have  instinctively  gained  a  control  over  themselves  and 
united  their  unconscious  and  their  conscious  selves,  but 
the  majority  of  humans,  no  matter  how  speciously  civilized 


UNCONSCIOUS  ESTIMATION  19 

and  conventional  they  may  be,  have  failed  of  the  spiritual 
union  within  themselves  which  is  so  rare  a  thing. 

A  curious  and  interesting  corollary  to  the  principle  that 
we  do  not  ourselves  understand  our  dual  nature  is  that 
while  the  real  Mr.  A  does  not  thoroughly  understand  him- 
self, although  he  thinks  he  does,  Mr.  B  unconsciously 
appreciates  and  measures  both  the  conscious  and  the 
unconscious  Mr.  A  and  acts  accordingly.  The  folly  of 
others  is  perfectly  patent  to  everybody.  This  folly  is  the 
result  of  the  split  between  the  conscious  wishes  and  the 
unconscious. 

Continuous  Unconscious  Estimation 

One  cannot  avoid  thinking  that  the  unconscious  is  con- 
tinually estimating  the  value,  according  to  its  primeval 
standards,  of  its  entire  environment.  A  machine,  without 
so-called  human  intelligence,  would  do  the  same  thing, 
if  it  was  furnished  with  the  delicate  apparatus  which  is 
found  in  the  human  organism.  If  we  but  suppose  it  to 
contain  but  the  feeling  of  liking  and  dislike,  and  the 
tendency  to  promote  the  things  that  cause  the  liking  and 
reject  those  which  cause  the  feeling  of  dislike,  we  shall 
have  the  medium  for  the  expression  of  a  great  deal  of 
action  which  looks  like  human  intelligence.  Every  situa- 
tion will,  in  itself,  contain  the  factors  whose  product  will 
be  a  plus  or  minus  balance  with  regard  to  the  desirability 
or  undesirability  of  its  continuance.  If  we  suppose  that 
the  situation  as  a  whole  includes  not  only  the  actual  mate- 
rial physical  surroundings  of  the  individual,  in  so  far  as 
he  can  sense  them,  but  also  the  factor  contributed  by  the 
physiological  nature  of  the  human  body,  we  shall  have 


20      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

all  that  is  necessary  to  account  for  the  variability  of  the 
valuations  of  human  experience.  For  the  same  external 
situation  will  evoke  now  one  and  now  another  reaction; 
it  will  be  desired  or  it  will  be  disliked  not  because  of  any 
inherent  quality  in  itself  but  because  of  a  difference  of  the 
state  of  the  physical  organism  of  the  body. 

If  that  is  the  case,  we  must  infer  that  the  unconscious, 
which  is  the  sum  total  of  the  reactions  to  the  environment, 
or  to  the  particular  situation  in  which  the  body  finds  itself 
from  moment  to  moment,  is  constantly  producing  tensions 
for  or  against  different  factors  in  the  situation,  and  that 
we,  as  consciousnesses,  are  quite  unaware  of  those  ten- 
sions. If  we  meet  a  person  for  the  first  time,  and  shake 
hands  and  pass  a  few  remarks  about  the  weather  or  the 
war,  it  is  unthinkable  that  the  physical  organism,  both  of 
ourselves  and  of  the  person  we  meet,  is  not  responding  to 
sensations  of  sight,  sound,  touch,  temperature,  odour — in 
fact,  every  quality  which  could,  and  even  those  which  could 
not,  be  perceived,  if  the  conscious  attention  were  directed 
to  them.  Although  we  had  formed  only  a  dim  idea  of  dis- 
like for  the  person  we  casually  met,  and  though  we  might 
later  be  advised  that  he  was  not  personally  clean,  and  that 
an  odour  of  perspiration  was  perceptible  about  him,  we 
could  realize  that  we  had  ourselves  dimly  perceived  that 
odour,  and  believe  it  quite  likely  that  we  had  formed  a 
dislike  for  him  on  that  account  alone.  Also  while  in  his 
presence,  if  some  third  person  had  called  to  our  attention 
that  the  person  to  whom  we  were  being  introduced  did 
not  look  us  squarely  in  the  eye,  but  had  a  furtive  glance, 
we  could  then  consciously  note  this  characteristic, 
although,  without  this  hint  from  the  third  person,  we 
might  have  utterly  failed  to  notice  it. 


J 


UNCONSCIOUS  ESTIMATION  21 

In  other  words,  observation  of  small  details  like  those 
just  mentioned,  while  it  may  not  be  conscious,  is  inevi- 
tably made  by  the  unconscious  part  of  the  mind,  and  is 
made  all  the  time,  and  includes  every  detail  of  every 
situation  in  which  we  find  ourselves.  The  proof  is  that 
we  frequently  recall  characteristics  of  persons  and  things 
after  we  have  ceased  to  have  them  as  a  part  of  our 
immediate  situation,  and  we  notice  retrospectively  that 
they  were  thus  and  so.  Later  conscious  observation  con- 
firms the  facts.  Therefore  we  must  suppose  that,  while 
conscious  observation  is  very  limited  in  extent,  unless  one 
is  trained  in  it  for  some  purpose,  like  the  magician 
Houdin,  the  observations  which  we  make  upon  persons 
and  things  are  made  and  completely  made,  and  with  no 
effort  on  our  part, — they  are  automatically  registered  as 
are  the  details  on  a  photographic  film,  but  they  do  not 
enter  consciousness.  Of  course  it  is  a  great  economy 
that  this  should  be  the  case.  It  would  be  a  great  waste 
of  time  for  us  consciously  to  make  a  catalogue  of  all  the 
phases  of  the  appearance  and  actions  of  every  chance 
person  we  met  and  every  scene  we  passed  through.  But 
it  is  quite  certain  that  this  is  being  done  in  us  by  our  uncon- 
scious all  the  time,  and  that  only  the  net  results  of  this 
unconscious  observation  are  occasionally  sent  up  into  con- 
sciousness. In  their  place,  below  the  threshold  of  con- 
sciousness, these  observations  and  records  are  of  great 
value,  as  they  enable  us  to  form  intuitive  judgments,  as 
they  are  called,  which  generally  come  as  near  to  being 
correct  as  we  can  consciously  make.* 

*Cf.  what  is  said  (p.  33  ff.)   about  unconscious  inference. 


22      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 
Primeval  Standards 

I  said  that  the  unconscious  is  making  judgments  accord- 
ing to  primeval  standards.  A  study  of  the  unconscious, 
carried  on  now  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  according 
to  psychoanalytical  methods,  has  established  the  fact  that, 
as  we  go  down  deeper  into  the  strata  of  the  unconscious, 
we  find  simpler  and  more  elemental  activities.  The  uncon- 
scious is  primarily  concerned  with  hunger  and  sex.  With- 
out the  barriers  which  society,  even  the  most  barbarous, 
has  set  up  against  the  unlicensed  gratification  of  these  two 
cravings,  the  individual  would  at  once,  and  every  time  in 
every  situation,  proceed  to  the  satisfaction  of  both  needs. 
It  is  repulsive  to  many  people  to  think  that  the  attraction 
which  other  people  have  for  them,  and  they  themselves 
for  the  others,  is  solely  and  merely  a  crass  sexual  one  at 
bottom.  But  if  it  is  a  fact,  why  bhnk  it?  It  would  horrify 
some  pretty  young  woman  school  teacher  to  be  told  that 
the  influence  of  her  personality  was  due  primarily  to  her 
physically  sexual  charms.  It  would  seem  to  vitiate  all 
of  the  ideals  which  she  had  held  before  her  of  spiritual 
and  intellectual  superiority.  Does  she  think  that  her  influ- 
ence over  the  boys  of  her  class  is  merely  due  to  her  mental 
cleverness?  Do  I  seem  cynical  in  making  these  remarks? 
If  it  can  be  shown  to  be  a  fact,  does  it  really  spoil  the 
whole  relation  between  her  and  her  boy  pupils?  If  it 
could  be  demonstrated  to  her  beyond  possibility  of  doubt 
that  her  attraction  of  girls  was  a  homosexual  one,  would 
that  necessarily  make  her  an  undesirable  teacher?  I  think 
not.  But  I  think  that  her  knowledge  of  these  fundamental 
facts  will  be  of  service  to  her  in  improving  the  quality  of 
her  relation  between  herself  and  the  pupils  of  both  sexes. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  FACTOR  23 

A  teacher  should  know  the  tools  with  which  he  or  she  is 
working,  and  all  the  means  of  producing  an  effect  on  his 
pupils,  and  this  one  of  unconscious  emotions,  or  as  we 
might  call  them,  to  make  them  more  comprehensible, 
unconscious  causes  for  attraction  and  repulsion,  is  one  of 
the  most  important  questions  which  comes  up  in  the  school- 
room. It  is  the  dynamo  which  supplies  all  the  power  for 
all  the  machinery  in  the  schoolroom  workshop.  To 
ignore  it  is  folly.  To  learn  all  about  it  that  can  be  learned 
is  the  nearest  approach  that  can  be  made  to  wisdom. 

The  Unconscious  Factor   {a  Specific  Instance) 

When  the  mind  is  most  concentrated  upon  some  one 
thing,  say  a  column  of  figures  which  one  is  adding,  there 
are  elements  in  the  very  object  of  the  keenest  attention 
which  entirely  escape  attention — of  which  the  mind  is 
totally  unconscious.    There  is  a  man  adding  a  column  of 
figures.     Outwardly  he  is  insensible  of  everything,  does 
not  know  that  the  weather  is  hot,  that  he  is  physically 
uncomfortable,  sitting  on  a  hard  seat  in  a  strained  posi- 
tion, reading  his  figures  with  tired  eyes  and  in  an  insuf- 
ficent  light.    He  adds  the  tens  and  units  of  each 
g         number  alternately,   from  the  top  downward, 
saying  to  himself  as  he  does  so:  17,  20,  100, 
^^       102,  152,  161,  221,  225,  305,  308,  348,  351, 
g         411;  and  then  verifies  by  taking  the  numbers 
upward,  saying:  68,  71,  iii,  115,  195,  204, 
^g       264,266,316,319,399,416.  It  does  not  agree 
— ^     with  the  first  time,  and  finally  he  finds  that  in 
^  going  downward  he  has  said  351  for  356,  hav- 

ing repeated  the  3  of  43  (next  to  last  number)  instead  of 


24      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

saying  the  8  of  68.  Of  the  numbers  alone  he  was  aware. 
But  what  made  him  take  the  3  instead  of  the  8  ?  That 
was  taking  the  3  twice.  Had  he  any  special  predilection 
for  threes  ?  He  had.  Everyone  has,  for  it  is  the  number 
which  has,  in  the  hinterland  of  the  mind,  the  closest  con- 
nection with  creativeness,  and  everyone  would  be  creative. 
Also  the  number  ignored  is  5.  The  number  5  is  linked 
in  the  memory  of  the  race  with  weakness  and  sohtude. 
Hence  it  tends  to  be  expunged  or  forgotten  in  favour  of 
3,  wherever  there  is  a  possible  alternative  between  them  as 
here.  Would  this  indicate  that  mistakes  of  dropping  fives 
are  more  common  than  the  other  errors  ?  Surely  they  are, 
when  fives  are  rivals  of  threes  in  operations  involving 
unconscious  mentality. 

This  is  a  case  which  I  took  as  an  example  of  the  most 
vivid  consciousness.  The  person  adding  was  supremely 
conscious  of  figures.  His  whole  attention  was  occupied 
by  figures  to  the  exclusion  of  every  other  thought  and  sen- 
sation. If  one  spoke  to  him,  he  would  not  hear,  until 
after  he  had  satisfied  himself  that  his  addition  was  cor- 
rect. Then  either  of  two  things  might  happen.  He  might 
suddenly  become  conscious  that  he  had  been  spoken  to, 
and  say:  "  Oh,  did  you  speak?  ",  or  he  might  have  been 
conscious  of  being  spoken  to,  but  voluntarily  ignored  it, 
till  he  was  through,  and  then  replied  to  the  remark. 

However  it  may  be,  we  have  him  in  an  intensely  con- 
scious state,  possibly  better  described  as  intensively  con- 
scious. But  even  in  that  state  we  find  him  absolutely 
unconscious,  for  the  time,  of  the  error  he  has  made.  He 
is  unconscious  not  merely  of  the  physical  conditions  of  his 
body,  but  he  is  unconscious  of  a  part  of  the  very  thing 
that  he  is  most  conscious  of.    It  may  seem  a  platitude  to 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  FACTOR  25 

say  that  one  is  naturally  unconscious  of  mistakes  while 
one  is  making  them.  Of  course,  every  error  is  an  unwit- 
ting one,  else  it  would  be  not  an  error  but  a  voluntary 
perversion  or  diversion.  But  why  are  some  wrong 
actions  errors  and  others  perversions?  Why  are  they 
not  all  voluntary  perversions  ?  Do  we  not  want,  all  of  us, 
to  do  what  is  right,  and  are  we  not,  all  of  us,  awake,  espe- 
cially when  we  are  doing  additions?  From  this  it  appears 
that  one  is  likely  to  have  unconscious  states  of  mind  pep- 
pered through  the  most  conscious  states.  When  the  man 
said  351  where  he  should  have  said  356  in  order  to  be 
correct,  he  was  fully  conscious  of  saying  351,  but  he  was 
not  aware  that  351  was  not  correct. 

We  might  say  that  he  was  fully  awake  to  the  number, 
but  asleep  to  its  incorrectness.  Thus  it  appears  that  one 
is  awake  to  a  thing,  that  is,  a  sensation  or  a  thought,  but 
asleep  to  the  relation  of  the  thought  and  the  thing.  We 
have  here,  then,  come  upon  a  general  rule,  namely  that 
things  (sensations,  thoughts)  are  more  easily  objects  of 
consciousness  than  relations  are.  One  can  be  perfectly 
awake  to  a  thing  and  absolutely  anaesthetic  to  many  of 
its  relations. 

But  there  is  more  to  it  than  that.  The  man  adding  the 
column  of  figures  was  wide  awake  to  something  that  did 
not  exist.  He  was  conscious  of  something  that  was  not 
there.  He  created  it  out  of  nothing.  Didn't  create  any- 
thing? Only  said  351?  But  where  did  the  351  come 
from?  It  was  formed  from  the  combination  of  things  al- 
ready in  his  mind.  But  it  came  from  the  repetition  of  a  3 
instead  of  the  addition  of  an  8.  How  could  that  happen? 
It  happened  in  spite  of  the  presence  of  the  8.  The  8  was 
ignored.    The  man  shut  his  eyes  to  it,  so  to  speak.    The 


26      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

3  supervened  and  obliterated  the  8.  So  the  prime  ques- 
tion is  about  where  the  3  came  from.  That  has  been 
hinted  at  above  in  saying  that  in  the  unconscious  life  of 
the  race  the  number  3  is  associated  with  creatlveness. 
For  we  can  easily  understand  that  if  there  is  a  general 
tendency,  such  as  creativeness,  which  is  going  to  make 
itself  felt,  to  push  itself  forward  whenever  it  can,  and  add 
its  colour,  as  it  were,  to  every  expression  of  thought,  it 
will  always  be  present  in  every  thought  in  whatever 
strength  it  can. 

If,  for  instance,  there  is  a  word  which  we  are  seeking 
in  our  minds,  we  may  say  that  our  mind  has  in  it  at  the 
time  a  hole  of  a  certain  shape,  which  can  be  filled  with 
only  the  right  word.  Every  other  word  will  be  a  misfit. 
Now  if  there  should  be  two  words  which  fit  the  hole,  and 
one  of  these  words  is  more  associated  with  the  general 
trends  of  the  unconscious  than  the  other,  it  will  naturally 
be  supplied  first.  That  amounts  to  saying  that,  in  the  selec- 
tion of  words  while  we  are  composing,  we  are  governed  by 
the  principle  of  the  line  of  least  resistance,  in  thought,  just 
as  in  physics.  It  is  about  the  same,  too,  as  saying  that 
in  thought,  and  in  this  matter  of  the  choice  of  synonyms 
in  particular,  the  actual  word  selected  is  the  algebraic 
sum  of  all  the  forces  that  are  possessed  by  each  and  every 
word  that  may  have  any  claim  at  all  to  come  into  con- 
sciousness in  connection  with  the  theme  on  which  we  are 
writing.  The  same  thing  takes  place  in  adding  a  column 
of  figures.  We  are  apt  to  regard  the  different  digits  as 
having  no  peculiarities  of  their  own,  but  that  is  not  the 
case.  Every  number,  and  particularly  the  smaller  num- 
bers, has  an  individuality  of  its  own.  It  is  itself  a  little 
centre  of  force,  a  force  which  it  has  acquired  through  the 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  FACTOR  27 

ages  of  human  thinking,  and  when  there  is  a  balance 
between  the  one  number  and  the  other  as  was  the  case  in 
the  addition  above  mentioned,  the  number  which  is  the 
stronger  will  come  up  into  consciousness  and  replace 
the  weaker  number.  It  seems  quite  extraordinary  to 
regard  an  absolutely  impersonal  number,  a  mere  counter, 
as  having  a  force  of  its  own,  but  that  is  exactly  what  I 
mean  to  say  it  has,  if  we  look  upon  it  not  as  merely  a 
written  or  printed  word  or  figure,  but  a  state  of  mind,  as 
in  the  illustration  above  given  it  undeniably  is. 

When  we  realize  that  so  elementary  a  thing  as  a  digit 
or  a  single  word  is  a  centre  of  force,  it  becomes  much 
easier  to  understand  that  other  mental  activities  are  also 
forces  and  that  the  net  result  of  their  operation,  as  we 
see  it  in  a  sentence  or  a  paragraph  or  a  book,  is  a  highly 
complex  result,  which  only  the  most  thoroughgoing 
analysis  can  reduce  to  its  elements.  And  if  a  book,  a 
novel,  a  play  or  a  system  of  philosophy  is  the  algebraic 
sum  of  all  the  forces  operating  in  the  mind  of  the  writer 
it  is  equally  true  that  all  other  expressions  of  individuality, 
all  conduct  and  every  individual  act,  are  quite  as  much  the 
effects  of  all  the  causes,  both  mental  and  physical,  which 
have  preceded  it. 

These  forces  we  group  under  the  name  of  wishes.  The 
force  of  the  conscious  wish  is  quite  familiar  to  everyone. 
A  person,  that  is,  a  normal  person,  wishing  for  a  thing, 
goes  right  along  on  the  best  known  path  of  acquirement 
and  keeps  going  until  he  gets  it.  The  contribution  of  the 
newer  psychology  to  this  subject  is  that  it  is  not  merely  the 
conscious  wishes  whose  fulfilment  one  is  seeking  from  hour 
to  hour  and  from  minute  to  minute,  but  that  there  is  a  far 
larger  number  of  unconscious  wishes  which  are  inexorably 


28      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

driving  us  to  do  things  all  the  time,  big  things,  little  things 
and  medium  things.  One  can  satisfy  a  conscious  and  an 
unconscious  wish  both  at  the  same  time.  This  is  shown  by 
the  sum  in  addition,  where  the  correct  sum  was  what  was 
consciously  desired,  and  the  mistake  was  a  partial  satis- 
faction of  an  unconscious  wish  for  creativeness.  In  fact 
every  error  of  any  kind  whatever,  whether  a  mistake  in 
addition,  a  slip  of  the  tongue  or  of  the  pen,  a  faulty 
memory  or  a  wrong  act  of  reasoning,  an  erroneously  car- 
ried out  action  or  a  course  of  conduct  based  on  a  care- 
fully reasoned  plan,  are  one  and  all  the  expressions  of 
wishes,  partly  conscious,  partly  unconscious.* 

That  one  can  satisfy  a  conscious  and  an  unconscious 
wish  at  one  and  the  same  time  is  shown  very  clearly  by 
the  choice  of  words  in  writing.  It  is  quite  evident  in  the 
composition  of  a  poem,  where  not  only  is  each  word  the 
satisfaction  of  a  wish,  but  every  thought,  every  figure  of 
speech,  every  mind  picture  which  is  evoked  in  the  mind 
of  the  poet  and  afterward  in  his  readers'  minds.  The 
most  popular  pieces  of  literature  are  those  which  most 
gratify  the  wishes  of  the  readers,  and  to  a  large  extent  the 
unconscious  wishes.  I  have  shown  that  in  my  analysis 
of  the  figure  of  onomatopoeia  on  page  io8.  The  wish 
gratified  by  imitative  language  is  an  unconscious  one. 
When  I  recite  to  my  classes  the  Greek  line  given  on  page 
1 08,  and  also  that  where  Chryseis  steps  from  the  boat, 

Eh  6ff  Xpvffiji?  v7fo?  ftrf  Ttovronopoio, 

'Ek  de  I  'Chryse  |  'is  ne  ]  'os  be  |  'pontopo  |  'roio 

the  hearers  even  though  they  know  no  Greek  are  amused 
by  the  similarity  of  the  rhythm  of  the  words  to  the  rhythm 

•  See  pages  167  and  257. 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  FACTOR  29 

of  the  actions  of  the  girl,  but  they  are  quite  unconscious  of 
what  wish  is  there  satisfied.  Also  lines  like  that  of  Tenny- 
son quoted  in  the  same  section  are  liked  because  of  the 
same  quality.  But  the  hearers  do  not  know  why  they  like 
them.  They  are  just  nice,  or  beautiful,  or  pretty,  or 
grand,  as  the  case  may  be,  and  that  is  as  far  as  the  an- 
alysis of  the  hearer  goes,  and  it  is  as  far  as  it  is  necessary 
for  it  to  go,  in  most  cases. 

But  when  it  comes  to  making  mistakes  which  involve  an 
injury  or  a  loss  of  money  or  life,  then  it  becomes  impor- 
tant to  know  the  true  causes.  Likewise  when  it  is  found 
that  some  men  and  women  can  turn  out  a  far  greater 
amount  of  work  than  others,  it  becomes  interesting  if  not 
important,  and  it  surely  is  important  in  these  times  of 
war,  to  find  out  the  exact  cause  of  these  differences  in  the 
efficiency  of  different  people.  To  that  end  many  elaborate 
experiments  have  been  made  and  are  being  made  daily, 
but  enough  attention  has  not  yet  been  given  to  the  causes 
which  lie  in  the  unconscious  lives  of  the  workers. 

In  the  schoolroom  every  mistake  will  take  on  a  new 
interest  for  the  teacher,  when  it  is  realized  that  it  comes 
not  from  any  faulty  construction  in  the  brains  of  the 
pupils  but  (in  the  majority  of  cases)  from  adverse  desire 
on  the  part  of  the  child,  a  desire  of  which  the  child  is  gen- 
erally utterly  unaware,  and  which,  when  the  newer 
psychology  has  permeated  through  the  schools,  will  be 
controlled  to  the  great  advantage  both  of  the  individual 
pupil  and  of  the  country  as  a  whole.  It  is  the  teachers,  too, 
who  will  be  the  ones  with  the  greatest  opportunity  of 
remedying  the  defects  inherent  in  present-day  education 
by  bringing  to  their  task  a  knowledge  of  the  unconscious 
working  of  the  mind.    In  the  schoolroom  there  is  the  op- 


30      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

portunity  to  a  slight  extent,  and  later  I  trust  there  will  be 
a  greater  time  given  for  the  purpose,  to  analyse  the  minds 
of  as  many  children  who  need  it  as  possible.  Of  course 
it  is  needed  only  in  the  pupils  who  are  doing  unsatisfactory 
work.  The  others  do  not  require  the  same  study.  But 
it  will  be  found  that  those  children  who  have  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  doing  their  lessons  are  those  in  whom  there 
is  the  greatest  number  of  unconscious  wishes  going 
against  the  successful  accomplishment  of  their  work. 

And  this  brings  me  again  to  the  theme  of  the  fulfilment 
simultaneously  of  both  unconscious  and  conscious  wishes. 
For  it  is  a  safe  assumption  that  many  if  not  all  of  those 
who  do  poor  work  would  like  to  do  good  work,  if  only  to 
gain  the  glory  which  comes  from  any  kind  of  achieve- 
ment. But  analysis  of  every  situation  where  bad  work 
is  done  reveals  an  unconscious  wish  on  the  part  of  the 
pupil  to  do  bad  work.  There  is  in  the  defectiveness  of 
the  work  a  satisfaction  gained  by  the  defective  worker. 
Either  it  is  an  amount  of  sympathy  from  some  parent,  or 
a  wish,  of  which  also  the  child  may  be  entirely  unconscious, 
to  "  get  back  at  "  somebody  with  poor  work.  Possibly  a 
parent  has  untactfully  commanded  the  child  to  accomplish 
some  school  task,  and  the  unconscious  antagonism,  natural 
to  every  man,  woman  or  child,  against  authority  is  thereby 
aroused;  possibly  the  task  is  rejected  by  the  child  on 
account  of  some  real  or  fancied  sickness,  as  Tom  Tulliver, 
in  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  said  it  gave  him  a  toothache, 
the  only  sickness  he  ever  had,  to  study  Euclid. 

There  are  thus  always  more  wishes  than  one  satisfied 
in  every  act,  in  all  conduct.  Unhappiness  always  results 
where  the  unconscious  wish,  operating  against  conscious 
ones,  which  are  those  imposed  upon  the  individual  by 


THE  UNCONSCIOUS  FACTOR  31 

society,  Is  fulfilled;  and  the  happiness  which  sometimes  is 
found,  as  by  the  boy  who  plays  truant  and  goes  fishing 
or  swimming,  Is  never  without  the  element  of  unhappiness 
caused  by  the  conflict  with  society. 

So  that  every  mistake  in  addition  or  in  any  mathemat- 
ical or  other  work  in  school  Is  the  result  of  two  kinds  of 
wishes  operating  in  conjunction  yet  in  opposition.  The 
strongest  has  to  win.  The  problem  for  the  teacher  is  to 
strengthen  the  conscious  wishes  by  aligning  the  uncon- 
scious wishes  with  them,  by  reinforcing  them  with  the 
unconscious  wishes.  It  can  be  done,  and  It  is  being  done, 
but  with  less  success  than  If  the  knowledge  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  unconscious  wish  were  a  perfectly  conscious 
knowledge.  I  call  it  an  Imperfectly  conscious  knowledge 
of  human  motives,  and  a  partly  unconscious  knowledge 
of  them,  to  go  on  the  general  principle  that  emulation  and 
ambition  and  desire  for  mastery  and  for  praise  is  likely  to 
make  boys  or  girls  do  their  best.  It  Is  really  necessary  for 
the  teacher  and  the  parent  to  find  out  why  sometimes  these 
appeals  to  well-known  motives  do  not  have  on  the  pupils 
or  offspring  the  effects  which  they  are  supposed  to  have. 

If  it  is  taken  into  consideration  how  complex  are  the 
mental  processes  of  even  the  youngest  children,  and  how 
strong  an  unconscious  desire  may  be,  and  how  every  act 
is  the  satisfaction  of  both  conscious  and  unconscious 
desires  at  the  same  time,  it  may  be  possible  to  find  in  each 
case  which  Is  studied  with  care  the  unconscious  element 
which  is  spoiling  the  whole  product.  In  a  glass  manufac- 
tory a  certain  amount  of  glass  turned  out  was  of  an  Infe- 
rior quality  because  its  colour  was  not  right.  The  manager 
told  the  owner  that  one  of  the  hands  had  thrown  a  screw- 
driver into  the  mechanical  mixer  and  that  the  relative 


32      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

strength  of  one  of  the  components,  soda,  had  been 
changed  thereby.  It  was  found  by  the  owner,  when  he 
examined  the  machinery,  that  no  such  thing  had  hap- 
pened. The  manager  had  through  an  oversight,  which 
he  was  ashamed  to  confess,  allowed  the  tank  supplying 
the  soda  to  the  mixer  to  become  empty.  Now,  I  believe 
that  teachers,  as  a  whole,  are  too  conscientious  to  allow 
the  failure  of  any  ingredients  which  they  know  about. 
They  are  quite  as  careful  and  competent  as  the  owners 
(parents)  in  this  case.  But  the  point  is  that  the  ingre- 
dient necessary  to  make  a  high  order  of  academic  glass 
in  this  simile  is  generally  unknown  both  to  the  owner  and 
the  manager  alike.  In  this  case,  through  ignorance  of 
properties  it  might  have  in  turning  out  a  thoroughly  per- 
fect product,  the  soda  is  not  used  at  all. 

Marion  Crawford's  Marietta  contains  the  story  of 
the  secret  ingredient  which  gave  to  medieval  Venetian 
glass  its  wonderful  colour.  Now,  the  wonderful  quality 
of  some  of  the  natural  product  of  the  human  mind  is  due 
to  an  ingredient,  so  to  speak,  that  has  been  sought  for 
through  the  ages.  It  is  the  aim  of  educators  to  make  a 
product  which  shall  be  equal  to  the  best  natural  product; 
in  other  words,  to  train  all  persons  to  be  nearly  as  pos- 
sible the  spiritual  and  intellectual  equals  of  those  great 
men  and  women  who  have  had  no  education,  or  who, 
having  the  same  education  as  their  very  inferior  coevals, 
have  distinguished  themselves  by  being  in  every  way  su- 
perior to  their  contemporaries. 

Just  as  the  colour  and  other  qualities  of  glass  are  due 
to  the  ingredients  and  to  the  manner  of  handling  them, 
so  it  is  clear  that  there  is  in  the  mind  a  constant  stream 
of  what  we  might  call  ingredients,  in  the  shape  of  wishes 


UNCONSCIOUS  INFERENCE  33 

or  trends  or  tendencies,  the  sum  of  all  of  which  inevitably 
makes  up  the  final  product  that  enters  consciousness. 
Most  educational  theory  up  to  the  present  has  been  based 
on  the  hypothesis  that  all  the  ingredients  were  conscious 
ones.  Educational  treatises,  to  be  sure,  have  chapters  on 
the  instincts,  and  on  habit  and  other  topics,  but  the  treat- 
ment of  any  of  these  topics  which  leaves  out  any  con- 
sideration of  the  unconscious  tendencies  is  sure  to  be 
incomplete  and  misleading.  To  describe  the  mind  with- 
out the  unconscious  factor  is  to  rehearse  Hamlet  without 
the  Prince  of  Denmark,  a  mere  rehearsal,  and  no  true 
performance. 

Unconscious  Inference 

"  The  spirit  is  willing,  but  the  flesh  is  weak  "  might 
be  applied  to  the  so-called  inability  of  the  pupil  to  grasp 
certain  propositions  and  the  relation  between  them.  Take, 
for  instance,  in  arithmetic  the  circumstance  that  some 
children  cannot  remember  the  multiplication  table  or  have 
difficulty  in  remembering  it.  We  may  think  that  their 
spirit  is  willing,  and  their  natural  ability  small,  but  there 
is  very  little  difference  in  the  natural  retentiveness  of  in- 
dividual minds.  The  difference  in  the  ability  to  remem- 
ber six  times  seven  equals  forty-two  is  a  difference  in  will- 
ingness to  accept,  not  the  truth  of  the  statement  but  the 
statement  itself,  in  the  first  place.  The  attempt  on  the  part 
of  the  teacher  to  evoke  this  numerical  relation  through  the 
reasoning  powers  of  the  child  is  quite  as  likely  to  arouse 
his  natural  unconscious  antagonism  as  is  the  imperious  de- 
mand that  he  shall  memorize  the  whole  table  of  6s.  Both 
of  them  make  an  appeal  to  him  to  do  something  that  he 
cannot  see  the  use  of  doing.     In  the  proposition  that 


34      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

6Xi=6  he  has  no  interest  because  it  is  so  flatly  self- 
evident  that  it  seems  sheer  nonsense  to  waste  time  about 
it.  With  the  other  multiples  of  6  he  has  no  concern  un- 
less the  numbers  can  symbolize  something  to  him,  as,  for 
instance,  that  6X2==  12  looks  like  the  shape,  now  cur- 
rent, of  a  box  of  eggs  holding  a  dozen.  The  trouble  is 
that  he  cannot  do  anything  with  these  facts.  They  will 
not  propel  a  coaster  or  tease  a  girl,  or  anything  else  inter- 
esting. His  flesh  is  strong  enough,  meaning  the  plasticity 
of  his  brain  tissue,  but  his  spirit  is  unwilling.  There  is 
indeed  nothing  in  the  nature  of  the  multiplication  table 
itself  which  should  make  his  spirit  willing.  It  is  only 
some  association  that  can  be  made  with  it  that  will 
show  him  that  he  can  do  things  with  it  that  will  make  him 
want  to  use  it.  The  same  is  true  of  most  of  the  subjects 
of  study. 

Frequently  in  academic  studies  one  comes  upon  some 
proposition  from  which  it  is  necessary  to  abstract  and 
derive  the  elements  and  make  a  catalogue  of  all  the  pos- 
sible permutations  of  the  combinations  of  these  elements, 
before  one  can  truly  be  said  to  understand  the  subject. 
While  this  mechanical  method  of  thought  is  natural  to  any 
highly  organized  machine  such  as  is  the  human  mind, 
it  is  in  the  latter  buried  deep  in  the  unconscious,  and  it 
is  difficult  for  all  children  and  for  most  adults  to  evoke  it. 

The  various  versions  of  the  two  propositions  which 
head  this  section,  about  the  spirit  being  willing  but  the 
flesh  being  weak,  would  be  quite  as  uninteresting  to  the 
average  adult  as  are  the  multiple  combinations  of  numbers 
to  the  average  child.  Just  as  the  child  cannot  see  what  he 
can  do  with  six  times  four  equals  twenty-four,  so  the  aver- 
age adult  has  not  yet  been  able  to  see  what  he  can  do  with 


UNCONSCIOUS  INFERENCE  35 

the  different  forms  in  which  the  same  proposition  can  be 
cast.  The  versions,  which  are  carefully  catalogued  in 
formal  logic,  with  rules  about  which  of  them  may 
and  may  not  be  inferred  from  each  of  the  others  are  al- 
ready formed  in  the  unconscious,  and  they  operate  there  in 
such  a  way  as  to  produce  in  some  individuals  some  strange 
inhibitions.  The  rules  of  formal  logic  are  the  work  of 
the  conscious  mind,  and  they  are  dry  and  mechanical 
enough.  They  might  also  be  called  the  development  of 
the  unconscious  thought  which  is  behind  all  correct  con- 
scious reasoning,  and,  when  we  think,  we  ought  to  get 
clear  and  logical  results,  but  we  do  not,  for  the  uncon- 
scious wish  continually  selects  the  one  which  is  most  con- 
sistent with  it,  regardless  of  scientific  truth. 

When  a  child  tells  a  lie,  the  cause  of  his  action  in  tell- 
ing it  is  one  that  exists  in  his  unconscious  wish.  The  rules 
of  formal  logic  apply  only  to  the  impartial  development  of 
all  the  thoughts,  and  not  to  the  selection  of  one  of  them. 
Formal  logic  takes  cognizance  only  of  the  verbal  form 
in  which  a  statement  is  made  and  not  why  the  individual 
makes  that  statement,  and  the  numerous  statements  that 
might  be  made  are  all  in  logical  form,  but  are  selected 
only  on  a  basis  of  their  congruence  with  the  unconscious 
wish. 

The  cause  of  most  persons'  making  any  statement  is 
generally  that  they  wish  it  were  true,  and  the  louder  they 
affirm  it,  or  the  more  eloquently  they  can  ring  the  changes 
on  the  same  wish  expressed  in  various  ways,  the  more  do 
they  seem  (to  themselves)  to  get  a  fulfilment  of  that  wish. 
But  they  do  not  see  or  in  any  way  become  cognizant  of  the 
latent  wish.  They  do  not  realize  that  the  satisfaction  they 
get  out  of  making  that  statement  emphatically  and  in 


36      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

various  forms  is  a  satisfaction  of  the  wish  that  it  might 
be  a  true  statement.  There  is  even  a  real  satisfaction  in 
proclaiming  that  a  subject,  say  Latin,  is  hard.  What  is 
the  total  situation,  if  it  really  is  hard?  First,  those  who 
do  not  succeed  in  learning  it  well,  have  what  comfort  they 
may  derive  from  the  fact  that  too  hard  a  subject  has  been 
given  them  for  any  except  the  phenomenally  brilliant 
pupil.  Those  who  do  succeed  in  it  have  a  very  solid  sense 
of  superiority  which  is  of  course  very  wholesome  and 
beneficial  and  gives  them  the  confidence  to  attack  other 
subjects  which  may  be  harder.  But  the  reiterated  state- 
ment of  a  child  that  any  task  is  hard  is  only  the  conscious 
expression  of  an  unconscious  wish  to  have  it  difficult, 
either  so  difficult  that  it  is  impossible,  or  difficult  enough 
either  to  excuse  bad  performance  or  bring  generous  re- 
ward of  praise  for  a  good  one.  Similarly  of  any  vehement 
statement  whatever,  as  that  Emily  cheated  or  Tom  has 
had  more  of  the  teacher's  attention  or  good  will,  and 
therefore  took  a  higher  rank  than  he  deserved,  or  what 
not.  The  obvious  advantages  to  the  accuser,  if  the  state- 
ments were  true,  are  a  matter  quite  apart  from  formal 
logic,  which  would  have  to  employ  the  cumbrous  syllogism 
to  prove  it,  but  are  evidently  an  unmistakable  expression 
of  an  unconscious  wish  to  be  relieved  of  a  responsibility 
which  would  cause  in  the  child  a  sense  of  inferiority  if  the 
responsibility  were  not  rejected. 

The  same  holds  true  of  all  adults'  statements.  The 
assertion  that  a  criminal  is  wholly  bad  is  necessary  to 
justify  his  being  executed  or  jailed  for  life,  and,  if  we 
have  disposed  of  him  in  either  of  these  ways,  we  can  but 
wish  it  were  true,  or,  as  we  express  it,  hope  that  it  is  true, 
because  If  it  is  not  true,  we  are  ourselves  in  the  very  un- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  NEGATIVE        37 

enviable  position  of  committing  a  wrong  quite  as  inex- 
cusable as  the  criminal's.  If  on  the  contrary  we  declare 
that  any  person  or  thing  is  absolutely  good,  we  are  but 
expressing  our  desire  to  have  him  (or  her  or  it)  quite 
perfect.  And  when  we  proclaim  a  person  or  thing  as 
superlatively  excellent  we  are  asserting  at  the  same  time 
our  own  excellence  in  being  able  to  see  and  point  out  the 
excellent  qualities.  All  of  which  is  quite  apart  from 
logic.  It  is,  on  the  other  hand,  psycho-logic,  which  liter- 
ally means  only  the  words  of  the  spirit  (the  soul,  which 
is  complete  and  unified  longing,  asserting  itself  in 
words). 

The  unconscious  is  continually  working  out  the  per- 
mutations mentioned  above  and,  for  the  purpose  of  ration- 
alization, is  delivering  statements  for  acceptance  by  the 
conscious  mind,  that  are  exactly  these  versions  of  the 
original  statement,  which  is  the  true  one.  But  the  con- 
tradictory is  the  one  offered  by  the  unconscious  and  ac- 
cepted by  the  conscious  mind.  The  acceptability  of  the 
contradictory,  "  The  spirit  is  willing,  but  the  flesh  is 
weak,"  is  partly  conditioned  by  the  fact  that  as  a  propo- 
sition it  is  in  perfect  form.  It  has  a  form,  indeed,  which 
is  quite  as  flawless  as  the  others.  The  only  difference 
in  form  is  that  in  the  word  weak  there  is  an  implied  nega- 
tive, because  it  means  *'  not  strong." 

The  Psychological  Negative 

The  force  of  the  negative  in  unconscious  thinking  is 
virtually  nil.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  psychological 
negative.  The  verbal  negation  of  an  idea  is  that  idea  un- 
changed, save  for  the  verbal  addition  of  the  word  "  not," 


38      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

which  has  no  psychological  value  whatever.  To  tell  a 
child  not  to  do  ,what  it  is  doing  is  equivalent  to  saying: 
"  I  see  you  are  doing  that.  I  congratulate  you  on  your 
ability  to  do  it.  And  you  are  doing  it  against  the  strong 
opposition  of  my  will,  which  shows  that  you  are  strong 
yourself,  even  stronger  than  I  am,  particularly  if  you  can 
go  on  doing  it  in  opposition  to  my  will."  The  only  way 
to  abolish  an  idea  or  stop  an  action  is  to  replace  it  with 
another  idea.  Then  the  first  idea  disappears  and  is  nega- 
tived in  the  only  way  possible.  It  is  supremely  difficult 
for  some  teachers  (parents,  or  average  business  men,  too, 
for  that  matter)  to  abolish  the  idea  from  their  own  con- 
sciousness. It  takes  hold  of  them,  by  virtue  of  the  very 
dynamic  quality  it  receives  from  the  fact  that  it  implies 
a  struggle  of  wills.  There  is  no  value  to  such  a  struggle 
of  wills.  If  the  teacher's  will  prevails,  there  is  a  defeat 
to  that  of  the  pupil  and  one  of  the  chief  ends  of  education, 
the  development  of  will  on  the  part  of  the  pupil,  has  been 
frustrated.  The  teacher,  strong  before,  has  been  strength- 
ened, and  the  pupil,  weak  before,  has  been  weakened, 
and  has  had  initiated  in  his  soul,  if  not  confirmed,  the 
habit  of  giving  in,  which,  existing  in  some  of  the  best 
trained  children,  is  a  continual  impediment  to  their  suc- 
cess in  after  life.  Success  in  later  life  depends  upon  the 
habit  of  conquering.  So  that  when  a  situation  arises  in 
which  there  presents  itself  an  opportunity  for  the  battle 
of  wills  between  teacher  and  pupil  (parent  and  child, 
businessman  and  employee)  the  quality  of  the  future  per- 
formance of  pupil,  child  or  employee  is  detrimentally  af- 
fected. It  is  much  better  not  to  have  a  conflict  of  personal 
wills,  and  particularly  in  the  school.  It  may  be  of  re- 
mote possible  benefit  in  the  home,  but  I  doubt  it.     It  may 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  NEGATIVE        39 

be  of  great  advantage  occasionally  in  business,  but  that 
does  not  so  much  concern  us  here.  In  the  school,  when 
a  teacher  thinks  it  necessary  to  say  "  Don't,"  let  him  or 
her  weigh  carefully  the  possibilities  of  avoiding  a  strug- 
gle of  wills  which  will  result  only  to  the  detriment  of  the 
pupil.  If  there  is  to  be  any  conquering  on  the  part  of  the 
pupil,  and  I  believe  that  the  whole  school  life  of  the  child 
ought  to  be  one  continuous  victory,  that  victory  should 
be,  for  obvious  reasons,  not  one  over  the  teacher,  but  over 
the  work  which  is  being  superintended  by  the  teacher. 
A  habit  of  victory  should  indeed  be  developed  in  the  child 
even  if  it  is  necessary  to  include  a  victory  over  the  teacher, 
and  over  the  school  rules,  in  order  best  to  develop  the  will- 
power of  the  child;  but  the  essential  point  is  missed  en- 
tirely if  the  battle  rages  between  the  pupil  and  the  teacher. 
If  it  is  inevitable  that  that  must  occur,  it  is  better  for 
the  pupil  to  conquer.  I  know  that  it  is  well  for  a  per- 
son to  know  when  he  is  beaten,  and  that  it  is  a  good 
thing  to  learn  to  accept  defeat  gracefully,  but  a  training 
in  the  acceptance  of  defeat  is  not  a  good  training  for  a 
child  to  fit  him  for  competition  in  the  external  world  of 
life. 

So  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance,  for  teacher  and  pupil 
as  well,  to  devote  their  mental  and  physical  activities  to 
the  accompHshment  of  the  academic  tasks.  The  personal 
relation  of  superiority  or  inferiority  in  point  of  will- 
power comes  up  again  and  again  in  the  schoolroom  as 
everywhere  else.  It  has  a  tendency  to  come  up,  simply 
because  of  the  fact  that  the  teacher  is  human  as  well  as 
the  child,  and  that  the  fundamental  desire  of  the  uncon- 
scious of  every  human  is  to  be  superior.  In  this  connec- 
tion we  may  clearly  see  the  great  disadvantage  which  it 


40      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

sometimes  is  for  a  child,  particularly  a  boy,  to  have  a  very 
strong-willed  father.  The  domination  of  the  father  pro- 
duces a  habit  of  servility  in  the  child  which  he  tends  to 
evince  in  his  relations  with  all  persons  with  whom  he 
comes  in  contact  in  later  life.  If  such  a  child  comes  in 
school  in  contact  with  a  teacher  of  strongly  domineering 
character,  a  character  which,  by  the  way,  is  fostered  in 
teachers  by  the  very  atmosphere  of  any  school,  he  will  get 
no  training  which  will  offset  the  very  adverse  conditions 
of  his  home  life.  It  would  be  better  for  such  a  child  to 
be  sent  to  a  school  where  the  teachers  had  been  trained  to 
allow  the  children  themselves  to  domineer.  In  such  a 
school  the  bashful,  doubtful,  quelled  spirit  might  learn 
something  of  the  habit  of  mastery. 

But  of  course  the  thing  cannot  be  done  that  way.  The 
teacher  must  recognize  that  the  most  vital  purpose  of  the 
academic  education  is  to  train  the  pupil  to  master  his 
physical  environment,  so  far  as  that  can  be  done  without 
interfering  with  the  equal  development  of  mastery  in  the 
other  pupils.  The  tendency  will  always  be  to  develop 
along  the  line  of  mastery  of  persons  and  not  things,  and 
this,  too,  has  its  great  value,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  in 
school  the  struggle  should  be  directed  to  the  mastery  of 
things  and  not  persons.  Because  of  the  unconscious 
tendency  to  turn  the  attention  to  persons  and  away  from 
things,  and  this  on  the  part  of  pupil  and  teacher  alike, 
this  sticking  to  the  point  in  academic  education  is  a  very 
difficult  matter. 

To  return  to  the  consideration  of  the  unconscious  per- 
mutations of  propositions — for  instance,  that  the  spirit 
is  willing.  This  is  the  contradictory  of  the  proposition 
that  the  spirit  is  unwilling,  and  the  flesh  is  weak  is  the 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  NEGATIVE        41 

contradictory  of  the  flesh  is  strong.     Thus  by  the  intro- 
duction of  the  negative  word  we  have  four  propositions : 

1.  The  spirit  is  willing  and  the  flesh  is  strong. 

2.  The  spirit  is  willing,  but  the  flesh  is  weak. 

3.  The  spirit  is  unwilling,  but  the  flesh  is  strong. 

4.  The  spirit  is  unwilling  and  the  flesh  is  weak. 

The  second  or  biblical  form  of  these  statements  (ut- 
tered as  a  truth  acceptable  to  consciousness,  because  it  is 
a  palliation  of  circumstances,  and  therefore  an  assertion 
of  superiority)  is  a  transformation  of  the  truth  which  is 
expressed  in  the  first:  The  spirit  is  willing  and  the  flesh  is 
strong.  This  last  arrangement  of  the  ideas  represents  the 
gist  of  the  teaching  of  psychoanalysis.  The  doctrine  of 
the  unconscious  teaches  too  that  all  these  permutations 
are  in  the  unconscious,  ready  for  selection.  The  asser- 
tion of  the  weakness  of  the  child's  flesh  is  an  assertion  of 
the  superiority  of  the  teacher.  If  the  child's  spirit  is 
willing  and  his  flesh  is  strong,  and  the  results  of  education 
are  as  meagre  as  they  are  today,  then  the  teacher  feels 
that  he  is  somehow  to  blame. 

With  strong  flesh  and  willing  spirit  each  individual 
ought  to  be  perfect.  I  will  not  mention  the  teachers  who 
think  that  both  the  spirit  is  unwilling  and  the  flesh  is 
weak.  But  the  teacher  feels  less  responsible  if  he  can 
say  that  the  flesh  is  weak.  The  child  that  does  not  make 
a  good  showing  cannot  do  so,  even  with  the  help  of  the 
teacher,  and  no  one  is  to  blame. 

No.  3 — the  spirit  is  unwilling  and  the  flesh  is  strong — 
is  the  unconscious  attitude  of  the  child  toward  school  work, 
and  he  is  not  to  blame  for  it.  Neither  are  the  teachers 
nor  for  that  matter  is  anyone  else.    It  is  in  this  as  it  has 


42      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

been  in  the  case  of  other  scientific  advance.  Wireless 
telegraphy  and  aeronautics  are  examples  of  the  present 
condition  of  the  practical  applications  of  physical  science. 
In  mental  science  we  are  as  far  back,  as  the  days  of  stage 
coaches  and  pony  post.  The  discovery  of  the  uses  to 
which  a  knowledge  of  the  unconscious  may  be  put  is  about 
on  the  same  level  of  development  as  the  knowledge  gained 
by  the  immediate  successors  of  Benjamin  Franklin  concern- 
ing the  nature  and  use  of  electricity.  We  have,  in  a  sense, 
got  the  unconscious  on  a  wire,  but  we  have  not  yet  been 
able  to  transmute  it  into  power  with  the  same  success  that 
has  been  attained  by  the  mechanical  devices  which  are 
transforming  Niagara  into  light,  power  and  transpor- 
tation. 

In  making  the  list  of  permutations  of  the  willing  spirit 
and  strong  flesh  ideas  we  have  been  bringing  into  con- 
sciousness (a  dreary  task,  I  hear  some  say)  what  was 
implicitly  worked  out  in  the  unconscious  and  is  worked 
out  not  only  with  that  but  with  every  other  possible 
proposition  that  could  be  made  with  words  or  even  with- 
out words  and  merely  with  situations.  Words  are  only 
the  imperfect  translations  of  situations  into  verbal 
form.  What  is  to  tiresome  about  the  mere  bringing 
of  these  permutations  into  consciousness  is  the  fact  that 
we  have  not  yet  grasped  the  bearing  of  these  particular 
concrete  mechanisms  of  thought,  which  are  combinations 
of  two  ideas  and  a  negative  word,  upon  human  conduct 
and  especially  that  part  of  human  conduct  constituted  by 
words  themselves.  But  the  unconscious  is  like  a  machine 
which  can  take  any  proposition  and  combine  it  with  any 
other,  affirmatively  or  negatively.  From  all  these  per- 
mutations that  one  is  selected  which  is  least  objectionable 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  NEGATIVE        43 

to  the  Censor.*  And  our  attitude  toward  education 
is  largely  that  of  proposition  No.  2:  The  spirit  is  will- 
ing, but  the  flesh  is  weak.  We  think  that  the  pupil  wants 
to  learn,  that  he  is  willing  to  do  the  tasks  we  set  before 
him,  but  we  have  really  failed  to  see  that  while  his  con- 
scious spirit  is  willing,  his  unconscious  is  not,  and  that 
the  unconscious  part  of  him  is  by  far  the  larger  and 
stronger. 

Also  we  have  failed  to  realize  that  the  language  of  the 
unconscious  is  acts  and  words,  acts  forming  as  great  an 
amount  of  its  language,  in  proportion  to  words,  as  is  the 
general  ratio  of  the  unconscious  to  the  conscious.  The 
acts  of  all  children  are  almost  all  unconscious.  In  the 
rarest  cases  do  children  really  know  what  they  are 
doing,  and  in  many  adults  we  find  an  almost 
complete  ignorance  of  what  is  the  true  signifi- 
cance of  a  very  large  proportion  of  what  they  are 
doing  from  hour  to  hour.  Particularly  significant  too 
is  what  we  are  not  doing.  Taken  together,  what  one  does 
and  what  one  avoids  doing  constitute  a  perfect  picture  of 
one's  character.  Now,  that  perfect  picture  is  constantly 
before  the  unconscious  of  every  observer,  and  this  huge 
mirror  so  to  speak  reflects,  to  those  who  dare  look  in  it, 
exactly  what  our  real  character  is.  Or  regarded  as  an 
enormous  computing  instrument,  the  unconscious  hands 
us  out  the  sum  of  the  product  or  the  remainder  or  the 
quotient  (all  being  the  results  of  the  unconscious  compu- 
tation) ,  and  we  have  not  an  idea  of  how  the  machine  did 
its  work,  any  more  than  the  average  person  has  a  clear 
idea  of  how  comptometers  work  or  what  to  do  with 
them  when  they  do  not  work  well. 

*  Cf.  pages  so  and  107. 


44      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

But  the  teacher  should  not  be  the  average  person.  He 
should  not,  though  he  does,  see  as  little  into  the  working 
of  the  mind  of  the  child  as  does  the  average  person  see 
into  the  mechanics  of  the  adding  machine.  To  carry  this 
simile  a  little  farther,  the  teacher,  up  to  date,  has  been 
required  to  know  little  more  about  the  inner  workings 
of  the  comptometers  that  he  has  before  him  in  groups  of 
ten  to  sixty,  according  to  circumstances,  than  he  would 
have  if  he  only  brushed  off  the  dust  with  a  rag  and  sat 
down  before  each  one  and  worked  it  madly  for  a  minute 
at  a  time,  and  then  rushed  at  the  next  one  and  hammered 
it  for  another  minute,  and  so  on,  and  did  the  same  sum 
on  them  all,  marked  the  wrong  ones  failures  and  put  them 
in  another  room  to  see  if  the  air  in  that  room  would  not 
improve  their  accuracy. 

As  teachers,  however,  we  should  know  the  intimate 
workings  of  the  rods,  bearings,  pawls,  ratchets,  springs, 
type-bars,  ribbons,  etc.,  of  every  human  comptometer 
which  we  have  in  our  classes.  We  are  not  fulfilling  our 
highest  function,  which,  to  be  sure,  no  board  of  education 
ever  requires  of  us,  if  we  do  not  learn  as  much  as  we  can 
of  the  thought  mechanisms,  conscious  and  unconscious. 
Our  sole  duty  is  not  to  exercise  the  machines  and  limber 
them  up,  much  as  some  automobiles  have  to  be  towed  "  in 
speed  "  to  get  them  to  go  themselves.  That  may  be  a  very 
great  service,  but  my  thesis  is  that  the  human  mechanisms 
which  are  driven  in  shoals  into  our  classrooms  are  almost 
all  out  of  repair;  and  merely  to  turn  the  wheels  of  a 
machine  which  is  not  in  order  is  as  bad  as  trying  to  crank 
a  gas  engine  without  turning  on  the  spark.  And  under 
the  sleek  hood  of  each  school  child,  and  behind  all  their 
radiators   (of  various  designs),  is  an  engine  of  which 


THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  NEGATIVE        45 

many  teachers  wrongly  believe  they  are  merely  the  drivers, 
and  not  required  to  understand  how  the  engine,  when  out 
of  order,  may  be  repaired. 

But  if  we  realized  that  when  some  such  statement  as 
that  the  spirit  is  willing  but  the  flesh  is  weak  is  the 
reverse  of  truth,  and  that  we  can  progress  with  that 
as  a  motive  power  about  as  fast  as  an  automobile  moves 
forward  when  the  speed-change  lever  is  in  "  reverse," 
we  should  be  most  eager  to  learn  the  mechanisms  of  the 
unconscious  thought  and  be  able  to  tell  why  our  engines 
which  we  thought  we  had  only  to  drive  do  not  develop 
as  much  power  as  they  ought,  do  not  steer  as  straight  or 
run  as  smoothly  and  quietly  as  they  should ;  and  with  such 
a  knowledge  of  the  workings  of  the  boy  or  girl  motor  car 
we  shall  be  able  to  remove  the  hood,  adjust  the  valve 
stems,  clean  the  oiler,  decarbonize  the  cylinders,  etc.,  and 
take  as  keen  a  pleasure  in  being  skilful  mechanics  as  we 
thought  to  take  as  chauffeurs.  Behind  the  "  shining  morn- 
ing face  "  there  is  a  much  more  complicated  mechanism 
than  that  inside  of  the  polished  exterior  of  the  sleek  young 
car  direct  from  the  factory.  We  had  somehow  got  the 
idea  that,  as  an  automobile  runs  better  after  about  a  thou- 
sand miles,  all  we  had  to  do  was  to  "  joy-ride  "  each  one 
a  thousand  or  so  and  turn  it  over  to  the  owner  a  little  the 
better  for  wear. 

Possibly  I  might  better  have  compared  the  teacher  to 
an  assembler  of  the  parts  of  the  machine.  Any  child  of 
twelve  can  run  one,  if  it  works  properly.  But  the  fact 
is  that  the  automobile-children  that  come  to  our  classroom- 
garage  have  themselves  been  run  by  children  mostly 
before  we  get  them.  They  have  been  run  without  oil  till 
they  knock,  without  everything  except  gas,  and  sometimes 


46      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

that  was  full  of  water,  due  to  the  "  fooling  "  of  the  people 
who  had  the  use  of  the  machine  before  the  teacher  saw  it. 
One  of  the  parts  of  the  unconscious  thought  mechanism 
treats  reality  as  I  have  treated  the  unwilling  spirit,  weak 
flesh  proposition.  It  turns  reality  inside  out  and  hind 
side  before,  and,  with  one  of  the  combinations,  sometimes 
least  suited  to  the  conscious  purposes  of  society,  it  pro- 
duces a  result  quite  the  opposite  of  that  which  best  adapts 
the  individual  to  his  social  environment.  Other  parts 
of  the  unconscious  thought  mechanism  work  in  other  ways 
and  produce  other  contradictory  results.  So  that  what 
the  child  does  or  does  not  do,  says  or  does  not  say,  in 
school  has  to  be  interpreted  as  modern  psychoanalysis 
interprets  a  dream.  The  dream  has  a  manifest  content 
(its  apparent,  bizarre  narrative),  and  also  a  latent  con- 
tent, which  never  by  any  chance  is  visible,  except  in  the 
youngest  children,  but  which  has  to  be  deduced  from  the 
manifest  content  through  the  thoughts  associated  with 
the  elements  of  the  manifest  content.  If  my  manipulation 
of  the  unwilling  spirit,  etc.,  seemed  futile  or  uninteresting 
to  some  persons,  it  was  because  they  did  not  see  its  inti- 
mate connection  with  the  realities  which  confront  us  in 
the  schoolroom  (as  everywhere  else).  I  conversed  this 
morning  with  a  young  teacher  who  confessed  to  me  that 
she  did  not  teach,  she  only  went  through  the  motions  of 
teaching.  I  talked  the  other  evening  with  an  old  teacher 
who  admitted  that  teaching  had  become  to  him  a  deadly 
grind,  as  indeed  why  should  not  driving  be  to  a  mere 
chauffeur?  Both  of  these  teachers  failed  to  get  the 
interest  out  of  their  profession  they  would  have  had  if  they 
had  seen  that  teaching  is  both  a  science  and  an  art,  a 
science  whose  sphere  is  the  entirety  of  human  thought^ 


SUMMARY  47 

conscious  and  unconscious,  and  an  art  whose  medium  can 
now,  thanks  to  the  newer  psychology,  be  the  Infinite  depths 
of  the  human  soul.  It  Is  my  belief  that  the  study  of  the 
latent  unconscious,  as  manifested  in  conscious  thought 
and  act,  will  give  to  teaching  a  fascination  which  artists 
find  In  real  life  and  bring  into  their  studios,  which  novelists 
find  in  Vanity  Fair,  which  producers  of  all  kinds  find  in  the 
problems  of  their  factories  and  of  the  means  of  distrib- 
uting their  products,  and  which  inventors  find  in  their 
laboratories.  By  the  recognition,  and  only  by  the  recogni- 
tion, of  the  limitless  possibilities  opened  up  by  the  knowl- 
edge of  some  part  of  the  unconscious  shall  we  be  able  to 
see  the  "  willing  spirit "  In  the  "  strong  flesh." 

Summary 

The  question  as  to  what  act  Is  most  personal  is  answered 
by  calling  what  we  most  desire  the  most  Intimately  our 
own  act.  The  majority  of  desires  are  unconscious  ones. 
Illustrations  are  given  of  the  unconscious  perception  by 
one  person  of  certain  personal  qualities  of  another  and 
their  evaluation  according  to  primeval  standards.  A 
specific  instance  is  cited  of  the  absolutely  unconscious 
factor  in  a  stream  of  most  intense  consciousness  (adding 
a  column  of  figures)  and  attention  is  called  to  the  fact 
that  even  the  number  three,  when  it  Is  an  Idea  and  not  a 
mere  word,  is  a  centre  of  force.  This  indicates  the  possi- 
bility of  all  Ideas  being  dynamic.  The  simultaneous  satis- 
faction of  conscious  and  unconscious  wishes  In  different 
spheres  of  life,  including  the  schoolroom.  The  uncon- 
scious wish  enters  as  an  ingredient  into  every  mental 
activity.    Unconscious  inference,  of  the  immediate  type, 


48      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

is  discussed,  and  the  relation  between  a  statement  and  the 
unconscious  wish  brought  out.  This  leads  to  the  view 
that  the  contradictory  of  a  proposition  is  as  valuable  to 
the  unconscious  as  the  proposition  itself,  because  the 
negative  has  no  psychological  but  only  a  logical  value. 
This  is  illustrated  by  the  statement  that  the  spirit  is  will- 
ing and  the  flesh  is  strong. 


CHAPTER  III 

INTERPLAY  OF  CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS 

It  Is  my  present  desire  to  illustrate  as  many  combinations 
as  possible  of  the  conscious  and  the  unconscious  act  and 
thought,  as  they  are  manifested  in  the  everyday  life  of 
child  and  adult  alike.  I  have  omitted  from  this  book  any 
mention  of  the  foreconscious,  deeming  it  unnecessary  for 
the  theses  of  the  book,  but  for  the  sake  of  completeness 
I  will  add  here  a  brief  exposition  of  its  main  features. 
In  omitting  mention  of  the  foreconscious  I  have  been 
obliged  to  increase  the  connotation  of  the  term  uncon- 
scious. The  unconscious  is  the  repository  of  all  the  ideas, 
sensations,  etc.,  which  have  ever  entered  our  minds,  and 
possibly  of  others  which  have  not  entered  our  minds  dur- 
ing our  own  lives,  but  have  been  inherited.  Of  the  in- 
heritance of  unconscious  ideas,  however,  there  is  no 
scientific  proof. 

The  distinction  between  the  unconscious  and  the  fore- 
conscious is  that  the  former  contains  all  the  memories, 
which  cannot  come  to  consciousness,  and  there  are  a  great 
many  of  them,  while  the  foreconscious  contains  the 
memories  of  all  kinds  which  can  be  voluntarily  evoked 
from  time  to  time.  Between  this  freely  coming  and  going 
group  of  Ideas  which,  like  familiar  names,  dates,  telephone 
numbers,  scraps  of  poetry,  music,  etc.,  and  the  vast  body 
of  totally  unconscious  memories,  accumulated  certainly 
during  the  lifetime  of  the  individual  and  possibly  during 

49 


50      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

the  life  of  the  race,  there  is  a  barrier  over  which  the  truly 
unconscious  mental  activities  are  absolutely  unable  to  pass. 
We  know  of  their  existence  by  inference  only,  but  by  an 
inference  which  is  so  logical  and  free  from  fallacy  that  it 
is  impossible  for  those  to  doubt  it  who  have  taken  the 
trouble  to  sift  the  evidence.  Not  only  of  the  existence  of 
this  unconscious,  the  thoughts  of  our  minds,  irrecoverable, 
without  the  special  technique  of  psychoanalysis,  but  of  its 
nature  we  have  some  reliable  information.  It  exists  as 
a  bhnd  wish,  an  amorphous  craving  which  can  best  be 
described  as  an  unreasoning  urge  to  life  and  love.  The 
illimitable  power  of  this  desire,  expressing  itself  among 
other  words  in  minute  muscular  contractions  in  all  parts 
of  the  body,  is  normally  able  to  transcend  the  barrier 
above  mentioned  only  in  the  form  of  actions  which  are 
approved  by  society.  Certain  disguises  are  adopted  by  the 
utterly  unconscious  wish,  which  convert  it  into  specific 
foreconscious  wishes  with  a  definite  form,  and,  bearing 
these  disguises,  it  comtes  now  and  then  into  full  conscious- 
ness. The  group  of  disguises,  much  like  the  costunles  of 
the  actors  in  a  play,  and  like  the  words,  intonations  and 
movements  which  are  prescribed  by  the  author  and  the 
stage  manager,  are  ready  in  the  wings  of  the  forecon- 
scious to  appear  in  the  drama  of  consciousness.  And  as 
the  author  will  not  write,  or  the  stage  manager  produce, 
what  will  not  appeal  to  the  public,  so  the  guardian  called 
the  "  Censor  "  at  the  barrier  above  mentioned  will  not 
allow  any  unconscious  wish  to  appear,  except  those  dis- 
guised so  as  to  be  acceptable  to  society. 

Thus  is  to  be  represented  the  condition  of  thoughts 
which  exist  in  the  permanently  unconscious  and  in  the  tem- 
porarily unconscious  state  called  the  foreconscious.     But 


CONSCIOUS  AND  UNCONSCIOUS  51 

as  the  concept  of  the  foreconscious  is  not  really  necessary 
to  the  mere  presentation  of  the  unconscious  factor  in 
education,  I  am  obliged  to  omit  what,  if  carried  out  fully, 
would  occupy  a  book  in  itself. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  speculate  upon  the  degree 
to  which  even  the  most  conscious  ideas  which  we  possess 
are  backgrounded  by  the  wishes  of  which  we  are  never 
conscious  and  to  study  out  the  possible  relations  between 
the  nature  of  the  unconscious  element  of  any  wish  and  its 
conscious  factor.  A  thorough  investigation  of  these 
matters  would,  I  am  sure,  bring  to  light  a  great 
deal  of  fact  which  would  explain  almost  everything 
in  human  psychology  which  is  now  very  difficult  to  elu- 
cidate. 

I  have  already  mentioned  the  fact  of  the  unconscious 
element  which  is  found  interspersed  throughout  the  stream 
of  consciousness,  even  where  it  seems  to  be  flowing  most 
narrowly  and  most  swiftly.  Certain  relations  of  the  con- 
scious and  the  unconscious  activities,  as  shown  in  thought 
and  action,  here  invite  consideration.  And  first  I  regard 
as  unconscious  acts  both  those  of  which  we  never  become 
aware,  such  as  the  movements  of  muscles  and  fluids  accom- 
panying the  physiological  functions  which  never  enter  con- 
sciousness as  such,  and  the  movements  of  the  parts  of  the 
body  of  which  we  only  sometimes  become  conscious.  Some 
of  these  are  called  symptomatic  acts  from  their  analogy 
with  the  symptoms  of  certain  nervous  diseases,  although, 
as  they  occur  in  all  persons,  well  or  ill,  there  is  no  present 
implication  of  abnormality  in  them.  They  are  all  blun- 
ders, errors,  slips  of  the  tongue  or  pen,  mannerisms,  and 
even  some  forms  of  so-called  neuralgia,  twitching  of  the 
face,  etc. 


>52      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

As  we  are  concerned  here  with  four  factors,  conscious 
thought,  unconscious  thought,  conscious  action  and  uncon- 
scious action  and  the  causal  relation  existing  between 
them,  it  will  not  be  a  complete  consideration  of  our  topic 
if  we  leave  unmentioned  any  one  of  the  combinations. 


Conscious  Action 

By  conscious  action  I  mean,  of  course,  action  of  which 
we  are  conscious,  which  includes  voluntary  action  and 
involuntary  movements  of  which  we  get  a  sensational 
report  through  the  afferent  nerves.  The  causes  of  volun- 
tary action  may  be  supposed  to  be  the  thoughts  which 
precede  and  accompany  it.  The  causes  of  the  involuntary 
movements  have  hitherto  been  presumed  to  be  move- 
ments and  not  thoughts,  that  is,  movements  in  the  tissues 
of  the  body.  But  it  seems  quite  certain  that  when  move- 
ments become  small  enough  they  are  indistinguishable 
conceptually  from  thoughts,  which  we  must  therefore 
include  as  among  the  causes  of  the  involuntary  muscular 
movements,  as  well  as  of  the  movements  involved  in  the 
various  physiological  functions.  So  that  we  can  see  here 
the  possibility  of  the  involuntary  movements  being  caused 
by  unconscious  thoughts,  and  we  get  an  idea  of  how  logi- 
cally necessary  is  the  concept  of  an  unconscious  thought, 
and  what  may  be  supposed  to  be  the  nature  of  an  uncon- 
scious thought — namely,  a  movement  which  is  so  slight 
that  it  has  not  the  force  to  penetrate  into  consciousness, 
or,  figuratively  speaking,  the  position  whence  it  could  pass 
over  into  or  be  read  off  as  conscious  thought.  And  we 
see,  finally,  that  the  only  difference  between  a  conscious 
thought  and  an  unconscious  thought  is  just  this  fact  of 


•       UNCONSCIOUS  ACTION  53 

its  being  in  consciousness,  its  being  cognized,  our  being 
aware  of  it.  There  is  no  other  difference  whatever.  And 
we  can  see  that,  if  we  suppose  conscious  thoughts  to  be 
causes  of  movements,  both  conscious  movements  and 
unconscious  movements,  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should 
deny  to  a  thought  some  causative  power,  just  because  it 
has  not  happened  to  enter  consciousness.  And  the  fact 
that  it  has  not  entered  consciousness  does  not  imply  that 
it  is  not  strong  enough  to  do  so,  for  the  newer  psychology 
has  shown  that  the  thoughts  of  which  we  never  are  con- 
scious have  been  opposed  in  their  attempts  to  enter  con- 
sciousness by  a  special  barrier  set  up  by  the  censor,  a 
barrier  of  special  strength,  peculiarly  adapted  to  exclude 
that  very  thought.  And  we  must  suppose  that  the 
thought  which  struggles  toward  consciousness  is  progres- 
sively strengthened  and  that  the  barrier  itself  is  contin- 
ually piled  higher  and  higher  by  the  censor,  so  that  that 
particular  thought  becomes  the  centre  of  a  battle  which  is 
waged  by  the  unconscious  against  consciousness.  Inciden- 
tally it  may  be  remarked  that  such  a  conflict  tends  to 
result  eventually  in  a  serious  derangement  of  the  physio- 
logical functions  themselves,  leading  to  both  physical  and 
mental  disease. 

Unconscious  Action 

By  unconscious  action  I  mean,  of  course,  any  one  of  the 
innumerable  motions  of  and  in  the  body,  of  which  we  are 
generally  unconscious,  including  those  of  which  we  some- 
times do  become  aware,  the  typical  instance  of  which, 
within  the  body,  is  the  circulation  of  the  blood.  From  time 
to  time  we  do  become  conscious  of  the  heart-beat  and  we 


'54      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

know  how  certain  kinds  of  thoughts  will  cause  it  to 
become  more  rapid.  It  is  also  conceivable  how  certain 
kinds  of  thoughts  would  cause  the  calibre  of  the  blood 
vessels  to  change  in  different  parts  of  the  body,  thus  lessen- 
ing or  increasing  the  amount  of  blood  delivered  there,  and 
how  in  the  same  way  other  fluids  closely  connected  with 
the  most  fundamental  physiological  processes  might  be 
affected. 

The  greatest  possible  number  of  relations  existing 
between  the  four  factors  mentioned  above  is  sixteen,  as 
given  in  the  following  table : 

1.  Conscious  action  causing  conscious  action,* 

2.  Conscious  action  causing  conscious  thought, 

3.  Conscious  action  causing  unconscious  action, 

4.  Conscious  action  causing  unconscious  thought, 

5.  Conscious  thought  causing  conscious  action, 

6.  Conscious  thought  causing  conscious  thought,* 

7.  Conscious  thought  causing  unconscious  action, 

8.  Conscious  thought  causing  unconscious  thought, 

9.  Unconscious  action  causing  conscious  action, 

10.  Unconscious  action  causing  conscious  thought, 

11.  Unconscious  action  causing  unconscious  action,* 

12.  Unconscious  action  causing  unconscious  thought, 

13.  Unconscious  thought  causing  conscious  action, 

14.  Unconscious  thought  causing  conscious  thought, 

15.  Unconscious  thought  causing  unconscious  action, 

1 6.  Unconscious  thought  causing  unconscious  thought.* 

Nos.  I,  6,  II  and  16,  starred  in  the  above  list,  imply 
that  an  action  can  cause  an  action  and  a  thought  can  cause 
a  thought,  whether  either  of  them  is  conscious  or  uncon- 


UNCONSCIOUS-CONSCIOUS  INTERPLAY     55 

scious.  The  question  as  to  the  validity  of  a  thought  caus- 
ing a  thought  is  more  metaphysical  than  psychological  or 
educational,  and  must  in  this  book,  be  accepted  as  the  basis 
from  which  it  is  written;  also  the  validity  of  the  statement 
that  an  unconscious  thought  really  exists,  as  no  attempt 
will  be  made  in  this  book  to  prove  it.  As  for  a  movement 
(action)  causing  a  movement,  that  is  a  matter  of  every- 
day physics. 

The  Unconscious  and  the  Conscious  Interplay 

But  the  interplay  between  conscious  and  unconscious 
action  and  conscious  and  unconscious  thought  is  a  matter 
that  daily  affects  the  work  and  conduct  in  every  school- 
room, as  it  does  indeed  in  every  meeting  place  of  humans, 
and  some  phases  of  this  interplay  are  so  important,  par- 
ticularly for  teacher  and  parent,  and  withal  so  little 
understood,  that  it  is  thought  advisable  here  to  study 
some  of  them  in  detail. 

In  the  slip  of  the  tongue  we  have  an  example  of  an 
action  which  at  the  time  of  its  occurrence  was  unconscious, 
that  is,  unnoticed  by  the  person  making  it.  Sometimes  the 
mistake  is  noticed  later  and  rectified  by  the  person  himself, 
sometimes  it  is  noticed  and  corrected  by  others,  and  in 
this  case  it  is  not  infrequent  that  the  person  making  the 
slip  of  the  tongue  denies  that  he  has  made  it.  The  action 
may  therefore  be  performed  while  the  person  is  unaware 
of  it,  and  may  or  may  not  later  be  recognized  by  the  same 
person.  It  is  different  with  slips  of  the  pen,  which  are  of 
course  automatically  registered.  The  mistake  is  in  this 
case  recorded  and  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  its  hav- 
ing actually  been  made. 


56      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

In  both  cases  what  was  unconscious  comes  later  Into 
consciousness.  But  in  both  cases  the  action  has  been 
unconscious,  and  in  no  sense  can  we  say  that  it  was  caused 
by  conscious  thought  or  action.  It  must  therefore  be  the 
effect  of  an  unconscious  factor.  Whether  that  cause  be  an 
action  or  a  thought  is  not  of  any  great  importance,  the 
only  significant  aspect  of  it  being  that  it  had  a  cause  in 
the  unconscious  part  of  the  mind. 

While  from  one  point  of  view  it  makes  no  difference 
whether  the  unconscious  factor  is  a  thought  or  an  action, 
for  the  purpose  of  schematic  completeness  I  will  include 
mention  of  unconscious  actions  which  produce  or  cause 
conscious  thoughts.  Unconscious  actions  producing  uncon- 
scious actions  and  thoughts  are  conceivable  as  absolutely 
continuous  in  all  life  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  it. 
For  by  unconscious  actions  we  mean  all  the  physiological 
processes,  and  many  of  the  larger  motions  of  the  parts 
of  the  body. 

Clues  to  the  mental  effects  of  physiological  (i.e.  uncon- 
scious) causes  are  given  us  in  the  mental  effects  of  cer- 
tain drugs,  e.g.  quinine  producing  an  auditory  sensation 
and  hasheesh  producing  a  visual  sensation,  and  so  on 
through  the  emetics,  sudorifics,  etc.,  named  according  to 
the  ways  in  which  their  effects  enter  consciousness. 

As  to  the  mental  (here  meaning  conscious)  effects  of 
unconscious  mental  activities,  the  newer  psychology  here 
furnishes  us  with  facts  many  of  which  appear  at  first 
paradoxical,  and  all  of  them  are  highly  important  for  the 
teacher  and  the  parent.  For  it  seems  quite  reasonable, 
when  our  attention  is  called  to  it,  to  say  that.  If  there  are 
so  many  and  so  constant  influences  of  the  physiological 
processes  upon  the  conscious,  and  even  more  upon  the 


CONSCIOUS  CONTROL  OF  UNCONSCIOUS     57 

unconscious  thoughts,  there  is  more  than  a  mere  likelihood 
that  unconscious  thoughts  themselves  have  an  influence 
over  conscious  ones.  It  is  inconcei\  able  indeed  that  all 
the  sights,  sounds  and  other  impressions  we  have  had, 
and  all  the  thoughts,  ideas  and  feelings  we  have  ever 
experienced,  which  are  stored  in  the  unconscious  portion 
of  the  mind,  should  not  have  an  effect  upon  each  other  and 
so  upon  our  present  nervous  constitution,  and  thereby 
determine  the  nature,  if  not  the  existence,  of  the  thoughts 
which  come  to  us  from  time  to  time. 

Clearly,  then,  the  unconscious  thoughts,  thoughts  we 
have  had  consciously  and  then  allowed  to  slip,  or  forcibly 
expelled,  from  consciousness,  are  ever  present  in  the 
great  and  always  developing  world  of  the  unconscious, 
and,  by  their  unnoticed  activities,  they  colour  our  every 
present  conscious  thought.  And  so  we  can  go  on  and, 
once  having  had  our  attention  called  to  it,  detect  the  uncon- 
scious factor  in  all  human  action,  a  bit  of  detective  work 
which  is  exceedingly  fascinating,  but  which  has  to  be  car- 
ried on  with  the  greatest  caution  and  the  results  rarely, 
if  ever,  communicated,  because  they  are,  for  a  very  good 
reason,  strenuously  rejected,  and  particularly  by  the 
persons  in  whom  they  are  detected.  A  little  practice  in 
this  picking  out  of  the  unconscious  factor  in  the  acts  and 
thoughts  of  ourselves  and  our  fellows  soon  shows  us,  too, 
how  extremely  great  is  the  ratio  which  it  bears  to  the 
conscious  factor. 

Conscious  Control  of  Unconscious  Thoughts 

On  the  other  side,  however,  is  the  possibility  of  the 
conscious  thoughts  causing  unconscious  ones,  of  the  con- 


58      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

scious  life  influencing  the  unconscious  life  within  us.* 
This  is  indeed  one  of,  if  not  the  most  important  of,  the 
aims  of  education  in  general.  Without  the  assumption 
that  conscious  activity  has  an  effect  on  us,  there  would  be 
no  use  in  an  attempt  to  educate.  But  what  can  be  the 
effect,  if  it  is  not  an  effect  on  the  unconscious  thoughts  and, 
through  them,  on  the  unconscious  actions  ?  And  here  lies 
also  another  implication,  namely  that,  if  there  is  a  causal 
connection  between  unconscious  thoughts  and  unconscious 
actions,  which  include  the  physiological  processes,  why 
may  the  connection  not  work  both  ways?  Why  may  it 
not  be  possible  that  a  well-learned  lesson  may  be  as  con- 
ducive to  good  digestion,  for  instance,  as  a  violent  tooth- 
ache impedes  the  learning  of  it? 

It  seems  in  every  way  more  rational  to  suppose  that 
conscious  and  unconscious  thought  and  action  are  causally 
connected  in  both  directions,  in  addition  to  the  consider- 
ation that  training  of  every  kind  is  but  the  conscious 
control  of  unconscious  activity,  whether  movement  or 
thought. 

Unconscious  Control  of  Unconscious 

We  come  finally  to  the  question  of  the  causal  relation 
between  the  unconscious  factors  themselves.  In  this  con- 
nection it  is  plain  that  the  thoughts  outside  of  conscious- 
ness influence  each  other  without  let  or  hindrance.  They 
grow  as  in  an  untended  garden,  or  one  tended  (up  to  the 
present  age)   by  merely  the  fractional  attention  that  a 

•Dewey  {Democracy  and  Education,  page  i88)  says  that  no  idea  can 
be  transmitted^  from  one  mind  to  another,  and  (page  272)  that  much 
of  experience  is  indirect.  If  that  be  true,  it  is  all  the  more  advisable 
for  all  those  interested  in  the  welfare  of  humanity  to  learn  the  means, 
most  penetrating  into  human  nature,  of  helping  society  in  its  develop- 
ment along  the  line  of  conquering  chaos  with  consciousness. 


UNCONSCIOUS  CONTROLS  UNCONSCIOUS     59 

very  narrowly  limited  ability  to  bring  them  into  conscious- 
ness can  exercise.  What  goes  on  below  the  threshold  of 
consciousness  in  each  and  every  soul  is,  at  first  glance, 
appalling  to  contemplate.  There  is  no  doubt,  too,  that  the 
appalling  nature  of  it  has  been  the  deterrent  factor  oper- 
ating to  turn  men's  gaze  away  from  it  for  so  many  cen- 
turies. But  as  with  all  deterrent  things,  the  fear  it  inspires 
vanishes  on  closer  inspection.  There  is  also  no  question 
that  to  any  person,  when  he  first  entertains  the  thought 
of  the  unkemptness  of  his  own  (and  everyone's  else) 
unconscious,  there  seems  to  be  nothing  in  the  world  so 
shameful,  so  savage,  so  hopeless.  But  that  feeling  soon 
passes,  giving  way  to  one  which  makes  clear  one  of  the 
central  aims  of  education,  namely,  to  make  possible  the 
widest  scope  of  conscious  life,  to  enable  each  individual 
to  realize  as  fully  as  possible  what  he  actually  is,  inside 
and  out,  so  to  speak,  and  incidentally  what  other  persons 
are.  We  become  then  better  acquainted,  as  it  were,  all 
around,  and  more  likely  to  make  allowances  for  each 
other. 

And  as  a  fundamental  purpose  of  academic  education  I 
believe  this  one  stands  out  pre-eminent,  namely,  to  enable 
each  individual  to  take  at  will  into  consciousness  as  many 
and  as  diverse  thoughts  as  possible  which  the  uneducated 
person  is  unable  to  face.  For  this  aim,  expressed  in  other 
words,  is  to  enable  the  individual  to  face  as  much  reality 
as  possible.  And  in  this  I  may  at  first  seem  to  be  implying 
that  the  unconscious  is  the  same  as  reality,  or  that  the  only 
reality  is  the  unconscious.  But  it  is  easy  to  see  how  that 
might  be  true,  or  how  it  becomes  true,  if  the  in- 
dividual develops  naturally  and  without  help  from  the 
outside. 


6o      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

For  the  Innate  tendency  of  all  individuals,  from  the 
earliest  days  of  infancy,  is  to  repress  reality,  to  forget  it 
voluntarily,  to  drive  it  from  consciousness  and  keep  it  out 
of  consciousness,  because  reality  is  largely,  and  more  and 
more  in  nervous  persons  than  in  others,  a  source  of  pain 
and  distress.  The  first  painful  experience  of  the  infant 
is  annihilated  for  it  by  a  wriggle,  or  disposed  of  by  crying 
until  some  other  hand  removes  the  painful  thing,  and  this 
attitude  of  rejection  is  typical  of  all  repression.  But  there 
is  no  question  any  longer  about  the  fate  of  such  repressed 
experiences.  They  are  not  really  annihilated,  as  the 
infant  might  think,  but  are  driven  back  into  its  own  uncon-  I 
scious.  And  so  we  go  on  from  year  to  year,  accumulating 
in  the  unconscious  all  the  painful  and  distressing  expe- 
riences. By  doing  so  we  make  them  non-existent  only  as 
far  as  consciousness  is  concerned.  ) 

Repressing  the  Neurotic 

Neurotics  are  those  persons  for  whom  the  world  of      ; 
external  reality  is  only  or  largely  a  source  of  distress. 
This  being  the  case  the  neurotic  is  the  trouble  finder  who 
is  at  any  rate  the  forerunner,  if  not  the  actual  elaborator 
of  improvements.     All  progress  is  improvement.     All      i 
improvement   in    social   relations    implies   the    need    of      ; 
improvement.     The  assertion  of  that  need  is  loudly  dis-      i 
claimed  by  society,   because   of  the  natural   inertia   of 
humanity.    The  specialization  of  the  neurotic  is  needed  to 
furnish  the  push  that  is  necessary  to  steer  society  from  the 
direction  in  which,  with  gyroscopic  fidelity,  it  is  heading, 
and  cause  those  deviations  without  which  society  would 
remain   a   permanent   crystallization.      Society,    without      , 


REPRESSING  THE  NEUROTIC  6i 

the  nervous  activity  of  the  neurotic  which  it  at  first  re- 
presses and  later  digests,  would  never  develop  beyond 
the  most  rudimentary  form. 

The  import  of  all  this  for  teachers  is  plain.  If  the 
children,  or  some  of  them,  who  are  before  the  teacher, 
belong  to  the  neurotic  type,  as  undoubtedly  some  do  in 
every  school,  they  will  be  children  whom  the  teacher 
cannot  handle  in  the  way  in  which  he  has  to  handle  the 
others.  The  same  external  uniformity,  so  far  as  demo- 
cratic institutions  may  demand,  will  have  to  be  maintained, 
but  the  mental  attitude  of  the  teacher  will  necessarily  be 
somewhat  different  in  the  case  of  the  two  groups.  In  view 
of  the  fact  that  the  neurotic  children  are  destined  to 
furnish  the  variations  from  the  regular  so-called  norm  of 
humanity  and  become  as  it  were  the  models  of  the  society 
of  the  future,  the  teacher  will  have  to  devote  a  somewhat 
more  special  interest  to  this  group.  In  the  neurotic  boy 
or  girl  there  will  be  the  possibility  of  developing  the 
ideas  which  society  will  later  adopt.  Any  capriciousness 
of  such  children  will  have  to  be  given  a  certain  amount  of 
respect.  The  strange  ideas  which  such  children  may 
express  are  not  to  be  ridiculed  by  the  teacher,  who  in 
ridiculing  them  would  be  in  the  position  of  the  barking 
dog  which  uses  this  method  of  heralding  everything 
strange.  It  is  the  proper  province  of  the  dog,  but  not  that 
of  the  thoughtful  human. 

There  is,  however,  a  perfectly  rational  explanation  of 
every  whimsy  of  every  child.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  teacher 
to  examine  into  the  causes  of  everything  in  the  nature  of 
the  erratic  in  children's  behaviour  and  see  where  the 
logic  of  the  situation  lies.  Much  injustice  is  done  to 
children  if  their  thoughts  are  not  given  the  attention  they 


62      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

deserve.  By  ridiculing  the  unusual  expressions  of  chil- 
dren, or  by  thoughtlessly  brushing  them  aside  as  irrele- 
vant, teachers  do  much  wrong  both  to  the  children  and 
to  themselves,  because  the  amount  of  attention  given  to 
the  really  original  thoughts  of  the  children  is  more  than 
paid  for  by  the  new  point  of  view  which  the  teacher  may 
thereby  gain.  If  the  teacher  in  ignoring  the  peculiarities 
of  the  children,  adheres  rigidly  to  the  inelastic  require- 
ments of  the  curriculum,  he  will  be  required  himself  to 
devote  all  the  time  of  himself  and  his  class  to  the  slavish 
following  out  of  the  prescribed  details.  If  he  never  made 
any  variation  in  treatment,  of  course  he  could  never  make 
any  progress.  If  the  curriculum  is  framed  with  the  great- 
est care  to  fill  the  needs  of  the  majority  of  the  pupils,  it 
will  not  suit  at  least  a  small  minority.  This  minority  is  by 
all  odds  the  most  interesting,  and  in  the  end  the  most 
progressive,  because  it  is  from  them  that  the  variations 
are  to  come  which  will  form  the  still  developing  norm  of 
future  generations. 

There  will  be  the  added  satisfaction  for  the  teacher,  if 
he  has  some  regard  for  the  peculiarities  of  the  minority 
of  children,  that  he  may  be  the  means  of  reducing  their 
maladaptation  to  their  environment.  For  instance,  the 
peculiar  child  is  always  attacked  either  literally  or  figu- 
ratively by  the  other  children  in  the  class,  who  laugh  at 
him,  or  even  fly  at  him  physically.  If  the  teacher,  holding 
as  he  may  legitimately  the  point  of  view  that  the  irregular 
child  is  not  going  to  get  on  so  smoothly  in  the  world,  and 
that  his  irregularities  will  be  at  least  a  slight  burden  to 
him,  attempts  to  prune  away  and  suppress  all  the  peculiar- 
ities of  the  child  in  the  effort  to  make  him  perfectly 
normal,  he  is  of  course  doing  exactly  what  the  children 


REPRESSING  THE  NEUROTIC  63 

themselves  are  unconsciously  trying  to  do,  and  he  thereby 
reduces  himself  to  their  level,  which  is  that  of  the  fixed 
social  environment.  Now,  the  function  of  the  neurotic 
in  society,  being  to  change,  through  his  own  variability, 
the  uniformity  of  the  social  fabric  as  a  whole,  should  be 
favoured  by  the  teacher  and  not  obstructed.  Obstructing 
the  changes  suggested  by  the  actions  and  thought  of  the 
unusual  child  will  be  doing  the  teacher's  best  to  go  against 
the  development  of  society.  As  the  aim  of  education  is 
the  adaptation  of  the  individual  to  the  social  environment, 
this  includes  also  the  possibility  that  the  environment  may 
be  a  changing  one  and  not  fixed.  If  that  is  the  case,  the 
very  worst  thing  that  the  teacher  could  do  is  to  add  a 
crystallizing  force  to  the  flux  of  social  life,  for  in  so  doing 
he  is  himself  obstructing  and  not  helping  the  progress  of 
social  development. 

The  actions  of  the  peculiar  or  unusual  child  are  in  a 
sense  quite  analogous  to  the  thoughts  emanating  from  the 
unconscious  which  the  conscious  life  is  constantly  attempt- 
ing to  repress.  In  fact,  the  thoughts  and  actions  of  the 
neurotic  in  general  are  much  more  likely  to  be  a  more 
direct  expression  of  the  unconscious  than  are  those  of  the 
so-called  normal.  If  it  is  the  duty  of  the  individual  to 
recognize  and  adapt  himself  to  the  greatest  amount  of 
unconscious  life,  it  is  surely  that  of  the  teacher  not  to 
ignore  but  to  study  the  manifestations  of  the  unconscious 
as  they  are  developed  in  the  children  above  and  below  the 
average  of  intelligence,  as  it  is  called.  If  the  teacher 
simply  ignores  the  actions  of  the  neurotic  child,  or,  failing 
to  be  able  to  ignore  them,  succeeds  in  repressing  them, 
he  is  doing  for  humanity  at  large  exactly  what  every  indi- 
vidual is  doing  for  himself,  and  sometimes  to  his  great 


64      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

disadvantage,  for  he  is  rejecting  at  least  one  form  of 
reality. 

The  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  individual  to  repress 
the  unpleasant  or  the  difficult  or  even  the  unusual  elements 
in  his  life  is  irresistible  in  childhood,  reheved  only  sporad- 
ically by  masochism.* 

It  is  as  if  the  unconscious  of  the  child  were  a  magnet 
which  attracted  pleasure  and  repelled  pain.  And  it  is 
as  if  the  pleasure  were  attracted  to  one  part  of  its  soul, 
while  the  repelled  pain  drifted  not  away  from  the  person- 
ality entirely  but  toward  another  part  of  it,  the  uncon- 
scious. It  must  be  so,  for  we  cannot  conceive  otherwise 
than  that  the  human  organism  is  a  perfect  and  complete 
register  of  all  the  external  world  with  which  it  comes 
in  contact,  and  that  if  some  of  the  experiences  are  locked 
up,  finally,  in  a  portion  of  the  organism  so  securely  that 
they  cannot  be  accessible  to  consciousness,  they  are  never- 
theless in  the  mind,  and  their  effects  are,  though  different, 
as  real  as  they  would  be  if  the  individual  could  succeed  in 
reaching  them.  They  are  indeed  the  reflection,  the  per- 
sonal complement,  of  a  good  portion  of  reality,  and  the 
individual  who  cannot,  or  dare  not,  look  at  them  or  take 
them  into  consciousness  and  become  aware  of  them  at 
will  is,  so  to  speak,  only  a  fractional  personality.  But 
most  of  us  are  that.  This  is  what  I  mean  therefore  by 
saying  that  the  unconscious  is  the  reality  within  us.  It  is 
the  other  side  of  experience,  absorbed  into  the  mind,  and 
by  most  persons  sedulously  ignored  because  of  its  unpleas- 
antness. 

The  aim  of  education  therefore  being  to  develop  the 
fullest  personality,  we  inevitably  conclude  that  the  means 

*  See    page    89. 


REPRESSING  THE  NEUROTIC  65 

to  this  end  is  the  re-cognizing  (cognizing  again)  what 
has  been  repressed  into  the  unconscious.  It  has  been 
cognized  once,  when  it  was  received  into  consciousness 
the  first  time,  but  the  tendency  to  repress  unpleasant 
experiences  is  always  so  strong  that  we  finally  succeed  in 
keeping  them  out  of  consciousness  (though  not  out  of 
mind)  forever. 

So  complete  is  the  repression  of  the  undesired  elements 
of  experience  that  for  most  people  it  is  absolutely  impos- 
sible, unaided,  ever  to  recover  these  elements,  although 
it  has  been  found,  in  medical  psychoanalysis,  that  the 
recovery  of  the  memories  of  unpleasant  experiences  has 
frequently  been  the  means  of  a  recovery  from  mental  or 
physical  ills.  Therefore  the  word  recovery  takes  on  a 
new  significance,  meaning,  as  it  does,  the  regaining  both  of 
banished  thoughts  and  of  the  entirety  of  reality,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  the  recovery  of  health  (Health=wholth). 
Perfect  health  means  the  ability  to  do  anything  that  is 
humanly  possible  up  to  the  maximum  efficiency  of  the  in- 
dividual organism.  It  means  also  the  ability  to  accept 
any  idea,  whatever  its  source.  When  for  any  reason  the 
individual  thinks  he  is  unable  to  eat  and  do  anything,  or 
is  unable  to  entertain  certain  kinds  of  ideas,  his  personal 
entirety  is  beginning  to  acquire  limitations.  He  begins 
to  lose  his  wholeness,  that  is,  his  health.  And  there  is 
no  question  that  this  attitude  is  at  least  quite  as  much 
mental  as  physical.  What  tells  a  dyspeptic  that  he  can- 
not digest  this  or  that?  Certainly  not  his  body  directly. 
He  makes  mental  inferences  about  reports  from  his  body, 
and  they  are  usually  erroneous  inferences. 


66      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

The  Combinations 

To  resume,  after  this  lengthy  digression,  the  consider- 
ation of  the  relations  of  the  four  factors  mentioned  on 
page  54,  we  find  that 

I.* 

2.  Conscious  action  causing  conscious  thought  is 
illustrated  by  ordinary  perception.  The  sensation  of  blue 
and  violet  colours  on  the  distant  horizon  and  green  and 
yellow  nearby  is  automatically  interpreted  as,  for  instance, 
a  road  between  trees  with  a  mountain  against  the  blue 
sky  in  the  background.  I  take  it  that  the  conscious  action 
of  sensation  causes  the  conscious  thought  "  mountain." 
It  is  quite  evident,  however,  that  the  immediate  effect  is 
more  than  fully  described  in  these  words.  For  if  we  carry 
on  the  train  of  thought  suggested  by  "  mountain  "  we  have 
thought  upon  thought  occurring  to  the  mind,  all  supplied 
by  the  unconscious  and  mediated  by  its  fundamental  crea- 
tive wish,  all  of  which  mental  phenomena  are  not  the  direct 
effects  of  the  mountain  view  alone. 

3.  Conscious  action  causing  unconscious  action  is  illus- 
trated by  the  things  we  do  all  the  time,  things  of  which  we 
are  not  aware,  when  these  can  be  traced  to  the  actions  we 
are  then  doing.  Possibly  the  best  illustration  is  the  physi- 
ological changes  accomplished  by  the  body  in  its  prepa- 
ration for  an  emergency  which  is  reported  to  conscious- 
ness at  the  same  time.  For  instance,  the  actions  of  the 
limbs  in  the  event  of  stumbling,  or  better  yet  the  changes 
in  circulation,  respiration,  etc.,  occurring  when  one  is 
really  or  Ideally  preparing  for  a  physical  struggle,  and  we 

*  Discussed  above,  page  54. 


THE  COMBINATIONS  67 

know  from  recent  researches  that  these  are  very  elaborate 
and  far-reaching. 

Unconscious  action  caused  by  conscious  action  is  amply 
illustrated  by  the  mannerisms  of  all  people.  When  they 
talk  or  work  they  do  certain  things  with  their  hands,  for 
instance,  of  which  they  are  generally  quite  unconscious. 
Much  of  the  study  of  motions  in  manufacturing  opera- 
tions has  been  devoted  to  the  eliminating  of  these  wasted 
motions,  which  might  have  been  removed  quite  as  effec- 
tively, if  not  as  speedily,  by  means  of  a  mental  analysis  of 
the  operatives,  as  all  these  useless  motions  are  the  expres- 
sion of  the  unconscious  wish  not  to  be  efficient.  If  this 
wish  had  been  understood  and  removed,  the  useless 
motions  would  have  vanished  without  further  effort.  This 
and  No.  9  are  probably  not  pure  cases,  because  all  actions 
are  generally,  if  not  always,  mediated  through  ideas, 
either  conscious  ones  or  unconscious  ones. 

4.  Conscious  action  causing  unconscious  thought  is 
what  we  try  to  effect  in  academic  education.  Not  only  is 
it  an  aim  of  education  to  increase  the  amount  of  uncon- 
scious material  which  consciousness  can  take  in  and 
assimilate,  but  it  is  a  further  aim  of  education  to  exercise 
some  control  over  the  organism  (or  organic  unity)  con- 
stituting the  unconscious.  The  advantage  of  this  control 
is  obvious  if  it  can  be  attained,  for  otherwise  the  control 
is  that  of  the  conscious  life  b>  the  unconscious,  the  latter 
in  most  people  completely  dominating  the  former.  If 
such  control  over  the  unconscious  by  the  conscious  cannot 
be  gained,  education  loses  its  main  advantage.  For  the 
assumption  that  education  has  the  function  of  passing  on 
to  the  individual  the  experience,  in  condensed  form,  of  the 
race  is  based  upon  the  other  assumption  that  the  expe- 


68      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

rience  of  the  race  can  find  some  lodgment  in  the  mind  of 
the  individual.  And  this  lodgment  can  be  effected  only 
through  the  assimilation  of  the  experience  of  the  race  by 
the  individual  unconscious.  It  comes  by  various  paths, 
but  all  through  conscious  ones  and  mostly  verbal.  But  if 
the  unconscious  of  the  individual  is,  through  early  environ- 
ment, made  inaccessible  to  conscious  influences,  then  the 
task  of  educating  that  individual  becomes  infinitely  more 
onerous  than  it  would  otherwise  have  been,  perhaps  even 
impossible.  And  it  is  one  of  the  theses  of  this  book  that, 
because  of  the  ignorance  of  parents,  for  which  they  are  in 
no  sense  to  blame,  the  unconscious  of  a  large  number  of 
school  children  has  been  made  inaccessible  to  conscious 
influences,  so  that  almost  all  the  work  of  the  teacher  is 
absolutely  fruitless. 

In  short,  we  may  say  that  unconscious  thoughts  caused 
by  conscious  action  is  the  name  of  a  continuous  stream  of 
influence  which  works  upon  the  unconscious  daily.  It  is 
the  only  way  by  which  we  can  control  the  enormous  power 
of  the  unconscious  desire.  Comparatively  little  knowledge 
that  is  definite  and  ready  for  application  to  our  present 
system  of  education  is  available  as  yet,  but  the  small  por- 
tion which  is,  should  be  spread  and  used  as  if  it  were  a 
particle  of  radium,  for  it  is  able  to  accomplish  what  no 
other  agency  in  the  world  can,  except  the  conscious 
thought  which  is  directed  intelligently  to  gain  control  of 
and  to  socialize  the  great  power  of  the  unconscious. 

5.  Conscious  thought  causing  conscious  action  is 
what  we  all  know  as  voluntary  action.  We  desire 
and  will  and  act,  and  the  first  of  these  causes  the 
second  and  the  second  the  third.  There  is  nothing  new  in 
this. 


THE  COMBINATIONS  69 

6* 

7.  Conscious  thought  causing  unconscious  action  is 
common  in  the  generally  recognized  influence  of  mind 
over  body.  That  unconscious  thought  causes  unconscious 
action,  however,  is  not  included  in  the  general  proposition 
that  mind  influences  body. 

Unconscious  action  caused  by  conscious  thought  is 
seen  in  the  symptomatic  action  following  certain  percep- 
tions. The  fidgeting  about  when  an  emergency  occurs, 
the  clearing  of  one's  throat  when,  in  preparing  to  make  a 
speech,  one  thinks  of  the  possibility  of  making  a  mistake, 
and  much  coughing  in  congregations  and  school  assem- 
blies are  an  expression  of  unconscious  thoughts  of  disap- 
proval of  some  element  of  the  "  exercises." 

Consciousness  is  evidently  much  more  limited  in  its 
scope  than  action.  There  are,  in  other  words,  actions 
which  are  so  rapid  and  so  numerous  that  for  conscious- 
ness they  exist  only  as  groups.  Thus  unconscious  action 
caused  by  conscious  thought  is  seen  in  everything  we 
learn  to  do.  Playing  a  piece  on  a  piano  is  a  concrete 
example  of  conscious  thought  producing  actions  so  rapid 
that  there  can  be  no  consciousness  of  them  as  separate 
entities.  Speaking  a  foreign  language  is  another.  The 
conscious  thought  sets  in  motion  parts  of  our  bodies  (lips, 
throat,  etc.)  of  which  we  are  not  specifically  aware.  The 
attempt  to  become  conscious  of  a  single  element  while  it 
is  taking  place  in  one  of  these  groups  of  which  we  are 
conscious  only  as  of  a  group,  sometimes  results  in  a 
failure  of  the  group  to  be  carried  out  successfully.  Thus, 
if  we  are  running  downstairs,  it  is  frequently  disastrous 
to  attend  separately  to  the  motions  necessary  to  take  one 

*  Discussed,  p.  54. 


70      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

of  the  steps,  because  the  consciousness  which  should  be 
given  to  the  whole  flight  Is  suddenly  taken  away  from  the 
whole  flight  as  a  unit. 

Mistakes  in  playing  the  piano  come  from  this  irregular 
shift  of  the  attention,  which  is  equivalent  to  saying  from 
a  shift  of  consciousness  from  a  larger  to  a  smaller  unit. 
This  shows  very  clearly  why  it  is  disadvantageous  to 
attempt  to  play  a  piece  of  music  at  a  rapid  tempo  until 
all  the  motions  of  the  fingers  and  hands  have  become  so 
firmly  associated  that  the  individual  motions  can  be  left 
safely  to  the  unconscious.  We  thus  also  see  the  true 
advantage  of  constant  practice,  and  just  what  practice 
does.  It  hands  over  the  control  of  the  motions  from  con- 
sciousness to  the  unconscious  (that  part  of  it  which  is 
called  the  foreconscious).  The  thoughts  which  were  In 
consciousness,  and  necessarily  there  during  the  learning 
of  the  piece,  or  of  the  groups  of  motions  of  which  it  Is 
composed,  are  dropped  back  into  the  unconscious  and 
become  unconscious  thoughts,  and  it  Is  these  unconscious 
thoughts  which  function  in  producing  the  mechanical 
operations,  while  consciousness  itself  is  devoted  to  the 
relations  of  tempo.  Intensity,  tone  quality,  etc.,  which  are 
determined  In  turn  by  other  unconscious  thoughts  con- 
nected with  still  wider  aspects  of  the  ego,  i.e.  various 
desires  for  superiority,  etc.,  which  are  struggling  for  grati- 
fication during  the  performance  of  the  piece. 

Quite  the  same  process  goes  on  in  literary  composition, 
where  the  conscious  motions  of  writing  with  the  pen,  or  on 
the  typewriter,  are  caused  partly  by  the  conscious  thoughts 
which  the  writer  Is  trying  to  express,  and  partly  by  the 
unconscious  thoughts  which  are  continually  struggling  for 
outward  expression.    This  combination  of  effort  between 


THE  COMBINATIONS  71 

consciousness  and  the  unconscious  in  literary  composition 
always  results  in  a  compromise,  what  is  actually  written 
being  a  result  of  both  causes  combined.  The  actual  effect 
of  the  unconscious  cause  in  this  case  is  primarily  the  selec- 
tion of  the  words  used.  It  is  quite  evident  that  the  actual 
words  occur,  apparently  of  their  own  accord,  although  a 
selection  of  several  possibilities  may  well  seem  to  be  the 
work  of  consciousness  itself.  This  is  illustrated  by  the 
fact  that  a  poet  is  frequently  unable  to  give  any  reason 
for  the  use  of  a  given  word  in  his  poem,  when  asked  to  do 
so.  "  It  just  came ;  it  was  the  only  word  that  fitted,"  etc., 
may  be  the  non-committal  reply. 

In  those  who  use  pen  or  machine  with  absolute  fluency, 
writing  is  an  example  of  a  group  of  motions  whose  sepa- 
rate elements  are  as  far  as  possible  removed  from  con- 
sciousness, which  is  devoted  to  quite  other  aims,  frequently 
indeed  following  a  definite  affect  or  emotion,  and  allowing 
first  the  words  to  come  into  consciousness,  sifted  through 
the  conscious  purpose,  and  yet  not  in  the  least  determining 
the  words  or  the  grammatical  forms  which  are  offered  by 
the  unconscious  wish.  So  completely  is  consciousness 
segregated  from  the  actual  motions  that  frequently  they 
are  imperfectly  carried  out.  A  word  is  misspelled  or 
entirely  omitted,  two  words  will  coalesce  (as  "withe" 
for  "with  the"),  which  consciousness  perceives  neither 
as  a  faulty  action  nor  as  a  defective  visual  impression. 

8.  Conscious  thought  causing  unconscious  thought  is 
a  concept  contributed  by  the  newer  medical  psychology. 
This,  too,  is  one  of  the  major  aims  of  education,  and, 
although  the  distinction  between  unconscious  action  and 
unconscious  thought  is  so  hard  to  draw,  on  account  of  the 
approximation  of  both  thought  and  action  to  each  other  in 


72      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

the  unconscious  (see  page  52),  it  must  be  mentioned  In 
this  place  as  well  as  in  the  other.  Unconscious  ideas  are 
caused  by,  or  at  any  rate  modified  by,  conscious  ideas  con- 
tinually in  our  mental  life.  In  infancy  or  early  childhood 
we  make  erroneous  inferences  about  four  of  the  most 
vital  of  human  relations, — fatherhood,  motherhood, 
sisterhood,  brotherhood,  and  even  marriage, — causing 
unconscious  ideas  which,  in  turn,  later  affect  every  impor- 
tant decision  we  make  about  the  matters  most  intimate 
to  us. 

The  fact  that  conscious  thought  may  cause  changes  in  un- 
conscious thought  may  be  objected  to  by  the  persons  who 
declare  that  unconscious  thought  or  unconscious  mental 
activity  has  no  existence.  I  think  It  has  been  amply  demon- 
strated, however,  not  only  that  unconscious  thought  Is  not 
a  contradiction  in  terms,  and  equivalent  to  unconscious 
consciousness,  but  that  Its  nature  is  that  of  continuous 
wish  or  tension,  one  of  whose  aspects  is  that  of  a  tension, 
muscular  in  quality,  which  nevertheless  is  potentially  a  con- 
scious sensation  or  perception.  Accepting  this  position  we 
are  forced  to  admit  that  the  causal  relation  may  work 
quite  as  well  one  way  as  the  other;  In  other  words,  not 
only  that  a  conscious  thought  may  cause  changes  in  the 
thoughts  or  tensions,  both  those  which  have  never  been 
in  consciousness  and  those  which  have  been  but  are  so  no 
longer,  but  also  that  the  unconscious  tensions  or  mental 
activities  may  have  an  effect  upon  the  conscious  states  of 
mind.  This  Is  actually  the  most  Important,  because  the 
most  constant  and  frequent  of  the  Influences  which  affect 
conscious  life,  an  influence  which  has  not  been  known  to 
exist  or,  even  If  suspected,  had  so  much  of  an  air  of  mys- 
tery about  It  that  It  baffled  all  previous  investigators.  But 


THE  COMBINATIONS  73 

now  that  the  modes  of  activity  (or  so-called  mechanisms) 
in  which  this  unconscious  desire  operates  in  itself  and  con- 
trols at  the  same  time  the  operations  of  conscious  thought 
are  beginning  to  be  known,  a  great  deal  of  the  apparent 
inconsistency  and  capriciousness  of  human  nature  is  com- 
prehensible and  reducible  to  known  natural  laws.  Thus 
the  existence  of  unconscious  mental  activity  and  the  possi- 
bility of  creating  changes  in  it,  training  it  to  work  in 
desirable  modes  and  to  align  itself  with  the  purposes  of 
real  civilization,  gives  an  entirely  new  aspect  to  the  prob- 
lems of  education.  If  we  have  in  us,  and  are  ordinarily 
dominated  by,  a  group  of  continuous  tensions  all  striving 
to  manifest  themselves  to  consciousness,  or  even  merely 
to  issue  from  a  state  of  tension  into  a  condition  of  actual 
movement  which  constitutes  their  relation,  and  if  the 
tendency  to  issue  into  actual  movement  takes  the  form  of 
an  action  not  congruent  with  the  social  environment  of 
the  individual,  as  it  does  when  the  instincts  urge  him  to 
commit  selfish  acts,  then  the  sooner  we  can  learn  how  to 
direct  these  mere  tensions  which  constitute  the  uncon- 
scious of  everyone  the  better.  In  order  to  do  this  suc- 
cessfully we  shall  have  to  revise  a  great  deal  of  our 
educational  theory  as  it  stands  today  in  order  to  make  it 
conform  with  the  new  facts  as  we  discover  them  from 
time  to  time. 

9.  Unconscious  action  causing  conscious  action  is  famil- 
iar as  perception  accompanied  by  automatic  movement, 
which  later  enters  consciousness.  Involuntary  blinking 
and  all  other  similar  acts  are  illustrations.  Conscious 
action  caused  by  unconscious  action  is  illustrated  by  the 
attempt  to  suppress  or  control  mannerisms  such  as  strok- 
ing the  beard.    The  causing  of  conscious  action  by  uncon- 


74      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

scious  action  is  of  course  the  story  of  all  movement  in  the 
physical  world.  But  for  the  entrance  of  consciousness 
at  some  time  during  the  period  of  evolution  there  would 
be  no  conscious  mentality  in  the  world.  We  suppose  that 
during  the  course  of  evolution  the  element  of  conscious- 
ness entered;  but  we  have  no  means  of  knowing  how  or 
when,  and  we  can  but  speculate  on  the  reason  why.  It 
has  been  surmised  by  some  that  it  entered  at  the  point 
where  an  awkwardness  or  difficulty  arose  in  the  combina- 
tions of  matter  and  force,  a  difficulty  such  that  compari- 
son and  preference  resulted,  and  that  the  need  for  more 
and  wider  consciousness  grew  as  combinations  became 
more  complicated,  difficulties  more  numerous  and  the 
need  for  finer  adaptations  became  greater.  At  that  point 
in  the  course  of  evolution  when  consciousness  did  enter  as 
a  factor  in  the  causal  nexus  it  became  ipso  facto  capable 
of  being  a  cause  itself  and  an  effect  of  other  causes.  So 
that  wherever  it  appears,  it  is  itself  the  effect  either  of  a 
physical  or  a  mental  cause  or  the  cause  of  some  other 
physical  or  mental  state. 

The  unconscious  action  which  causes  the  conscious 
action  most  familiar  to  common  observation  is  ordinary 
sensation.  The  vibration  of  the  ether,  which  is  uncon- 
scious action,  causes  through  the  sympathetic  nervous 
system  the  adaptations  of  the  eye  which  give  us  the  sen- 
sation of  light.  Similarly  the  quite  unconscious  chemical 
action  of  quinine  gives  us  the  conscious  sensation  of  a 
ringing  in  the  ears.  The  actual  external  motion  conse- 
quent on  the  perception  of  the  light  is,  however,  the 
movements  in  the  muscles  of  the  iris  of  the  eye  and 
those  controlling  the  convexity  of  the  lens.  The  action 
of  doing  something  appropriate  to  the  light  or  the  drug, 


THE  COMBINATIONS  75 

and  not  the  sensation,  is  considered  by  some  to  be  the 
result  of  the  light  or  the  drug,  and  the  sensation  itself  to 
be  merely  an  epiphenomenon.  But  to  such  people  con- 
sciousness of  every  kind  is  epiphenomenal  and  as  such  is 
excluded  from  the  causal  nexus,  but  its  substratum  the  dis- 
position is  admitted. 

10.  Unconscious  action  causing  conscious  thought  we 
see  in  anyone's  becoming  aware  of  having  made  a  mis- 
take, in  his  feeling  a  bodily  pain  of  any  kind  or  in  any  way 
becoming  aware  of  any  of  his  own  physiological  processes. 
Also  it  is  seen  in  any  conscious  reflection  about  any  in- 
stinctive acts.  This  variety  of  awareness  is  particularly 
poignant  about  the  time  of  puberty,  when  physical  changes 
that  have  taken  place  or  are  taking  place  are  brought 
into  the  consciousness  of  the  adolescent  in  terms  which  he 
or  she  is  unable  at  first  to  understand.  Here  too  educa- 
tion's task,  which  has  been  most  inadequately  performed 
in  the  past,  places  a  new  responsibility  in  the  hands  of  the 
teacher,  which  those  not  having  some  knowledge  of  the 
unconscious  will  hardly  be  able  to  fulfil. 

The  instincts  and  the  instinctive  acts  are  par  excellence 
the  unconscious  acts  which  cause  conscious  thoughts 
because  of  their  peculiarly  compelling  nature.  The  con- 
scious thoughts  experienced  as  reactions  to  these  in- 
stinctive actions,  particularly  during  the  period  of  ado- 
lescence, are  with  some  individuals  so  unfortunate  as  to 
mar  to  some  extent  their  entire  subsequent  life.  The  new 
powers  arising  from  the  unifying  of  the  reproductive 
functions  under  the  primacy  of  the  genital  zone  *  are 
so  great,  and  the  fortuitous  and  undirected  employment . 
of  them  frequently  so  disastrous,  that  it  seems  as  if  edu- 

*  Compare  the  author's  Man's  Unconscious  Confiici,  page  128. 


76      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

cation  had  no  more  important  task  than  successfully  to 
pilot  the  adolescent  through  this  period. 

Other  examples  of  conscious  thoughts  caused  by  uncon- 
scious actions  are  all  such  ideas  as  may  occur  to  anyone, 
as,  for  instance,  that  it  would  be  really  better  to  correct 
one's  habits.  Unconscious  action  may  be  said  to  cause 
conscious  thought  in  all  cases  where  we  become  conscious 
of  actions  after  we  have  performed  them.  This  applies, 
of  course,  to  the  sudden  awareness  of  having  made  a 
blunder  or  blurted  out  a  truth  we  had  intended  to  con- 
ceal, or  finally  become  conscious  of  the  real  significance  of 
our  actions,  many  of  which  we  perform  first  and  realize 
the  meaning  of  only  afterwards.  This  becoming  aware 
of  the  inner  significance  of  our  actions  is  a  sort  of  waking 
up,  an  illumination,  a  sudden  burst  of  realization  that  we 
have  builded  better  than  we  know  (or  worse),  and  in- 
deed is  illustrated  by  all  instances  where  we  suddenly  be- 
come aware  of  the  unconscious  factor  in  our  conscious 
actions.  The  unconscious  element  in  all  conscious  action 
has  already  been  mentioned  in  another  section  (9),  and  I 
believe  the  most  valuable  thoughts  that  ever  come  to  us 
are  those  which  make  us  aware  of  this  unconscious  ele- 
ment. This  is  an  awareness  that  poignantly  gives  mean- 
ing to  what  was  before  meaningless.  And  the  results  of 
this  kind  of  awareness  are  very  noticeable  in  the  health 
and  happiness  of  the  individual.  Nowhere  else  is  it  so 
clear  that  ignorance  is  darkness  and  that  in  darkness  is 
disease  and  disorder  of  every  kind.  And  no  kind  of 
disease  is  so  charged  with  misery  as  that  which  springs 
from  an  unenlightened  state  of  the  creative  craving. 
Many  a  person  has  lived  a  life  darkened  by  a  misinter- 
pretation of,  or  by  a  failure  to  understand,  this  most  vital 


THE  COMBINATIONS  77 

of  all  desires,  and  to  see  it  in  its  true  relations  to  himself 
and  particularly  to  herself,  and  to  society. 
II.* 

12.  Unconscious  action  causing  unconscious  thought  is 
also  a  new  concept  contributed  by  the  later  analytical  psy- 
chology. The  existence  of  this  variety  of  human  experi- 
ence is  naturally  impossible  to  sense  directly.  The  results 
of  it  fill  conscious  experience,  but  the  actuality  of  it  is 
necessarily  a  matter  of  inference. 

In  the  sphere  of  instinct  these  unconscious  actions  must 
inevitably  produce  unconscious  thoughts  which  are  of  the 
greatest  moment  to  the  individual  life. 

13.  Unconscious  thought  causing  conscious  action  we 
find  in  a  great  many  situations  where  the  individual  is  at 
a  loss  to  explain  why  he  did  thus  and  so.  In  fact,  all  such 
actions  can  be  explained  only  on  the  supposition  that  they 
were  caused  by  unconscious  thought  or  action.  A  phobia 
or  any  other  unreasonable  fear  is  an  illustration  in  ordi- 
nary life,  and,  in  the  schoolroom,  any  unwillingness  or  any 
irresistible  impulse  on  the  part  of  the  child  to  do  any  par- 
ticular thing  or  not  to  do  it  has  to  be  thus  accounted 
for.  It  can  be  explained  in  no  other  way  than  that 
this  conscious  action  was  caused  by  some  unconscious 
thought. 

As  will  be  shown  in  the  section  on  rationalization  (page 
164),  an  inability  to  assign  the  proper  reason  for  a  con- 
scious action  is  characteristic  of  persons  of  all  ages,  how- 
ever much  they  may  be  willing  to  give  some  reason.  The 
reasons  assigned  by  most  people  for  their  religion,  their 
political  views  and  their  ideas  about  sex  are  all  really  sup- 
plied by  unconscious  thoughts,  no  matter  how  strongly 

*  Discussed  page  58. 


78      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

the  persons  may  affirm  that  the  given  reasons  are  the 
real  ones. 

Conscious  action  caused  by  unconscious  thought  is  il- 
lustrated by  a  great  deal  of  the  thoughtless  action  so  char- 
acteristic of  humans,  adults  as  well  as  children,  and  when 
occurring  in  extreme  form  is  known  to  neurologists  as 
compulsion. 

Conscious  action  is  caused  by  unconscious  thought  (that 
is,  unconscious  wishes,  because  all  unconscious  thoughts 
are  wishes  or  tendencies).  In  a  certain  degree  all  of  our 
conscious  acts  are  partly  determined  by  our  unconscious 
thoughts.  Those  acts  which  we  consider  to  be  the  most 
completely  dominated  by  consciousness,  where  indeed  we 
seem  to  will  everything  we  do,  exactly  according  to  a 
definite  conscious  plan,  are  nevertheless  not  without  a 
large  determining  factor  which  comes  directly  from  the 
unconscious  wish.  Any  mistake  or  error  which  we  make 
in  doing  anything  to  which  we  think  we  are  giving  our 
entire  attention  is  absolute  proof  that  that  particular  act 
constituting  the  mistake  was  not  in  consciousness  at  the 
actual  time  of  the  making  of  the  motion.  This  is  true 
whether  the  motion  be  a  lip  movement,  a  respiration,  a 
tongue  movement,  a  movement  of  the  hand  or  a  step. 
It  is  thus  seen  that  every  error,  no  matter  in  what  sphere 
of  activity  it  occurs,  is  an  expression  of  some  unconscious 
wish.  This  statement  seems  very  paradoxical  when  the 
error  is  a  serious  blunder  leading  to  illness  or  loss  of  life, 
but  it  nevertheless  remains  true  in  all  cases.  The  uncon- 
scious wish  which  may  cause  an  action  leading  to  loss,  as 
for  instance  when  one  fails  to  lock  the  stable  door  and 
the  horse  is  stolen,  may  not  be,  and  frequently  is  not, 
a  definite  wish  for  that  kind  of  result.    It  may  be  an  un- 


THE  COMBINATIONS  79 

conscious  wish  for  something  quite  different  and  uncon- 
nected with  the  loss  of  a  horse  or  anything  else.  It  might 
well  be  an  unconscious  wish  which  was  for  leaving  every- 
thing wide  open,  exposed,  unprotected,  a  wish  which  may 
be  really  a  resistance  against  authority  and  symbolize  the 
general  desire  for  superiority.  Or  an  awkward  move- 
ment which  results  in  knocking  a  vase  from  a  mantelpiece 
and  thus  breaking  a  valuable  piece  of  bric-a-brac  may  or 
may  not  be  the  expression  of  a  wish  to  destroy  that  par- 
ticular piece.  Freud  gives,  In  his  Psychopathology  of 
Everyday  Life,  an  excellent  example  where  a  statue  was 
smashed  by  an  awkward  movement,  where,  however,  there 
was  a  definite  wish  in  the  unconscious  to  get  rid  of  that 
very  statue. 

Examples  of  conscious  action  having  nothing  but  con- 
scious thought  as  their  cause  are  really  Impossible  to  find. 
Every  conscious  action  contains  so  large  an  element  of  un- 
conscious thought  that  it  is  frequently  possible  to  state 
that  the  conscious  element  In  the  causation  of  it  was  very 
slight  indeed.  In  errors  it  is,  of  course,  nil,  and  there- 
fore we  should  perhaps  consider  this  relation  under  the 
head  of  "  unconscious  action  caused  by  unconscious 
thought."  But  this  rubric  I  wish  to  reserve  for  the  per- 
fectly automatic  actions  which  will  be  discussed  under 
No.  15. 

So  that  the  conscious  action  caused  by  unconscious 
thought  which  Is  seen  In  errors  is  really  a  slight  misnomer. 
We  call  the  error  conscious  simply  because  we  become  con- 
scious of  it  as  kinetic  sensations  during  or  after  Its  per- 
formance, in  a  series  of  acts  to  which  we  are  devoting  our 
"  whole  attention." 

I  have  been  much  Impressed  by  the  nature  of  the  mis- 


8o      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

takes  made  by  pupils  in  the  study  of  a  foreign  language. 
The  pupil  who  sees  the  word  "  impetum  "  and  reads  it 
"  imperium,"  a  word  which  has  occurred  a  few  lines  be- 
fore, is,  in  this  error,  possibly  expressing  an  unconscious 
wish  not  to  exert  himself  mentally  enough  to  make  the 
fine  discrimination  necessary  to  differentiate  the  words. 
Those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  never  confuse  "  viris  " 
with  "  vires  "  or  "  viris  "  give  evidence  of  an  unconscious 
wish  to  make  such  discriminations  and  are  likely  to  show 
the  same  tendency  to  discriminate  finely  in  other  spheres. 
Of  course,  the  unconscious  wishes  of  all  pupils  are  almost 
uniformly  against  making  the  mental  effort  to  carry  on 
a  train  of  "  directed  thinking,"  *  instead  of  floating  on 
the  stream  of  "  undirected  thinking  "  or  phantasy,  where 
they  get  without  effort  the  ideal  fulfilment  of  all  their  un- 
conscious wishes. 


The  Source  of  Thoughts 

14.  Unconscious  thought  causing  conscious  thought  is 
illustrated  by  the  foregoing  to  some  extent,  but  more 
specifically  by  the  natural  occurrence  of  apparently  fanci- 
ful ideas  during  a  state  of  reverie.  The  occurrence  of 
any  idea  to  the  mind  from  the  mind  and  not  from  some 
sensation  or  perception  is  a  case  where  a  conscious  thought 
is  caused  or  evoked  by  an  unconscious  thought. 

It  is  probably  not  strictly  and  literally  true  to  say  that 
a  conscious  thought  is  caused  by  one  unconscious  thought, 
because  it  is  frequently  found  that  the  conscious  thought 
is  the  combined  result  of  several  or  many  unconscious 
thoughts,  each  containing  a  small  amount  of  the  gen- 

♦Cf.  page  i88. 


THE  SOURCE  OF  THOUGHTS  8i 

eral  tendency  or  trend  of  the  unconscious  as  a  whole.  It 
is,  however,  a  fact  that  every  conscious  thought  which 
cannot  be  directly  traced  to  a  conscious  action,  and  the 
only  ones  that  can  are  the  sensations  and  perceptions,  has 
its  real  origin  in  the  unconscious.  The  universality  of  this 
rule  makes  it  of  the  greatest  import  for  education  because 
conscious  thoughts  which  are  expressed  in  conscious  acts 
are  the  most  palpable  proof  of  the  results  of  education, 
and  it  is  clear  that,  in  order  to  exercise  the  best  kind  of 
control  upon  the  thoughts  which  spontaneously  occur  to 
the  individual,  we  must  devise  some  means  of  controlling 
the  source  from  which  the  ideas  (and  ultimately  the  acts) 
come  in  each  individual  case. 

But  until  teachers  and  parents  realize  the  uniform 
source  of  all  ideas  (namely,  the  unconscious),  it  will  be 
impossible  to  plan  any  method  which  shall  exercise  the 
proper  control  over  the  source  of  ideas. 

The  fact  that  unconscious  thought  or  tension  has  an 
effect  upon  conscious  thought  has  been  suspected  for  many 
centuries,  but  its  mechanisms,  as  recently  observed  by 
analytical  psychologists  in  America  and  Europe,  are  just 
today  beginning  to  be  understood  so  that  a  procedure  can 
be  followed  out  by  means  of  them  which  will  result  in  a 
better  ability  to  control  them.  In  short,  the  unconscious, 
long  unknown,  like  an  undiscovered  mine  in  each  and 
every  one  of  us,  is  believed  to  be  rich  in  most  valuable 
ore,  which  can  be  worked  with  profit  as  soon  as  the  veins 
are  adequately  surveyed,  and  the  methods  of  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  ore  are  fully  devised. 

But  more  like  "  a  woman  in  the  case  "  the  unconscious 
mental  activity  causes  actions  which  are  explainable  on 
no  other  basis  than  that  there  is  an  unconscious  mental 


82      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

activity  of  very  high  potentiality,  and  that  it  furnishes  the 
springs  of  action  which  have  hitherto  baffled  the  specu- 
lation of  the  most  penetrating  philosophers. 

The  most  striking  contribution  of  the  newer  psychology 
to  the  knowledge  of  human  conduct  was  made  by  its  dis- 
covery that  the  ordinary  night  dream  is  a  direct  effect  of 
the  unconscious  wish,  and  that  instead  of  being  a  trivial 
and  insignificant  occurrence,  it  is  the  straightest  road 
directly  into  the  heart  of  the  unconscious.  A  dream  is 
par  excellence  the  conscious  thought  caused  by  the  uncon- 
scious thought.  It  is  the  conscious  thought  to  which  no 
other  cause  save  the  unconscious  can  be  attributed.  In  it 
we  see  the  unconscious  working  with  the  fewest  obstruc- 
tions it  finds  anywhere  in  mental  life.  The  only  inhibi- 
tion exercised  upon  it  is  by  the  censor,  to  pass  which  all 
the  transformations  take  place  that  are  effected  in  the 
unconscious  wish  in  order  to  make  it  presentable  as  a  con- 
scious one. 

15.  Unconscious  thought  causing  unconscious  action  is 
seen  in  the  disorders  having  a  nervous  origin  which  the 
newer  medical  psychology  has  taken  as  its  peculiarly  ap- 
propriate task  to  cure.  This  relation  is  of  only  admoni- 
tory import  to  teachers,  for  it  will  seldom,  if  ever,  be 
their  duty  to  attempt  to  cure  the  nervousness  of  a  child 
by  the  radical  method  used  in  psychoanalysis.  But  all 
teachers  should  know  that  the  unconscious  thoughts  of 
children  and  adults  are  admitted,  by  a  rapidly  increasing 
school  of  physicians,  to  be  the  causes  of  both  mental  and 
physical  diseases,  many  of  which  have  previously  been 
attributed  to  merely  physical  causes.  The  theory  of  these 
physicians  is  that,  when  the  actual  unconscious  thought, 
or  group  of  thoughts   (called  a  complex),  is  accurately 


THE  SOURCE  OF  THOUGHTS  83^ 

ascertained,  the  cause  of  the  disease  is  removed  by  being 
brought  from  the  unconscious  into  consciousness.  But  it 
is  an  impossible  task  for  the  average  teacher,  as  indeed 
it  is  for  some  physicians,  to  find  this  complex,  because 
it  has  to  be  deduced  from  the  voluntary  confessions  (free 
associations)  of  the  patient,  and  it  is  never  discovered  by 
questioning.  There  is  hardly  a  possible  question  that  does 
not  contain  a  suggested  answer,  except  the  one  query: 
"What  do  you  think?"  and  the  answer  is  most  likely 
to  be:  "Nothing."  I  include  this  relation  only  for  the 
sake  of  completeness  of  inventory,  so  to  speak,  the  full 
discussion  of  it  requiring  a  special  treatise. 

Unconscious  actions  are  generally  caused  by  uncon- 
scious thoughts.  The  unconscious  action  of  stroking  the 
beard  or  the  chin,  pulling  the  moustache,  sticking  fingers 
in  buttonholes,  rolling  up  paper,  pamphlets,  etc.,  into 
tight  rolls,  picking  nose,  scratching  the  head,  have  all 
been  traced  to  their  unconscious  causes  in  the  desire  for 
creation,  the  desire  for  creation  in  reproductive  forms  * 
being  repressed  and  that  for  creation  in  productive  form 
not  having  been  developed  in  such  people  to  such  a  degree 
as  to  absorb  that  portion  of  the  primal  urge  which  is  leak- 
ing out  into  these  so-called  symptomatic  actions. 

That  an  unconscious  thought  should  be  the  cause  of 
an  unconscious  act  does  not  seem  strange  when  once  we 
have  admitted  the  principle  of  causation  into  psychology 
and  admitted  the  existence  of  the  unconscious  thought. 
As  we  know  that  the  unconscious  thought  is  a  tension 
which  is  always  struggling  for  expression  in  action,  it  is 
not  surprising  if  some  of  the  numerous  tensions  of  which 
we  are  not,  and  never  can  become,  conscious,  gain  their 

*  See  page   196. 


84      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

outlet  Into  external  reality  through  motions,  attitudes, 
mannerisms,  facial  expressions  and  grimaces  of  which  also 
we  are  generally  totally  unconscious.  On  this  principle 
we  know  that  the  nervous  coughing  and  clearing  of  the 
throat,  together  with  all  forms  of  embarrassment.  Includ- 
ing stammering  and  blunders  of  speech  and  action,  are 
but  the  outward  manifestation  (a  very  much  transformed 
one)  of  the  primal  urge  for  creation,  an  issue  (not  to  say 
a  leak)  of  energy  which.  In  other  environment,  might  have 
been  used  up  in  reproductive  or  productive  creation. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  from  this  point  of  view  many  of 
the  great  accomplishments  of  humans  are  examples  of. 
unconscious  activities,  because  they  are  results  of  which 
the  producer  never  even  dreamed.  They  are  quite  an- 
alogous. In  their  formation,  to  the  nervous  mannerisms  of 
lesser  people.  The  ideal  expenditure  of  the  energy  of  a 
man  or  a  woman  would  consist  in  that  form  and  degree  of 
productive  and  reproductive  creation  which  best  devel- 
oped the  innate  powers  of  the  individuals  and  prolonged 
the  life  of  themselves  and  their  families  and  contributed 
most  to  the  liberation  of  the  energies  of  their  fellow-men 
and  women,  most  of  which  are  now  being  checked  by  the 
awkward  relations  which  society,  as  it  has  evolved,  has 
imposed  upon  itself. 

In  an  absolutely  healthy  development  of  social  rela- 
tions the  numerous  inhibitions  by  which  a  life  in  a  highly 
complex  form  of  society  Is  surrounded,  makes  It  very  dif- 
ficult to  keep  a  wholesome  balance  between  the  accepted 
and  the  unaccepted  varieties  of  relaxation  of  tensions. 
Expressed  in  other  words,  the  unconscious  wish  for  crea- 
tion meets  obstructions  on  every  side,  and  the  more  com- 
plicated the  social  environment  of  the  individual  the  more 


THE  SOURCE  OF  THOUGHTS  85 

numerous  are  the  inhibitions.  Naturally  and  instinctively 
the  child  seeks  to  create,  and  at  the  time  of  puberty  there 
is  an  almost  irresistible  urge  to  reproductive  creation. 
Education,  dimly  sensing  the  need  for  a  transmutation  of 
this  reproductive  urge,  has,  though  with  comparatively 
small  success,  attempted  to  employ  the  creative  energies 
of  men  in  a  productive  rather  than  in  a  merely  repro- 
ductive way.  In  this,  education  has  to  go  against  in- 
stinct, and  in  this  conflict  arise  the  main  difficulties  of 
educational  practice. 

Unconscious  thoughts  (which  are  all  wishes)  are  the 
causes  of  all  the  unconscious  acts  which  make  up  so 
large  a  proportion  of  human  conduct,  the  more  youth- 
ful the  individual  the  more  unconscious  the  act.  For 
a  fully  conscious  act  must  have  in  it  some  element  of  an 
idea  of  its  result.  Take,  for  example,  the  throwing  of 
a  stone.  It  is  of  course  impossible  to  say  that  the  boy 
who  throws  a  stone  is  unconscious  of  what  he  is  doing, 
for  while  he  is  surely  conscious  of  what  he  wants  to  do 
in  throwing  the  stone,  he  is  unaware  of  all  he  is  actually 
doing,  that  is,  he  does  not  know  whether  he  is  going 
to  hit  the  right  or  the  wrong  thing  with  it.  He  some- 
times resolutely  blinds  himself  to  the  possibility  of  the 
stone's  going  astray  and  hitting  something  with  de- 
structive effect. 

Careful  consideration  shows  us  that  there  is  an  un- 
conscious element  in  every  act,  as  we  frequently  do  or 
say  things  with,  for  instance,  a  conscious  purpose  of 
pleasing,  when  a  choice  of  words,  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment,  a  choice  of  words  which  we  are  pleased  to  call 
unlucky,  spoils  the  whole  effect.  Du  Maurier  in  the 
London  Punch  illustrated  a  series  of  jokes  which  ran 


S6      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

for  years  under  the  title  of  "  Things  Which  One  Would 
Rather  Have  Expressed  Differently."  The  utter  failure 
of  such  remarks,  from  the  conscious  point  of  view,  con- 
sists in  the  unconscious  element  of  the  action,  an  uncon- 
scious element  which  is  contributed  by  the  unconscious 
thought  or  tension.  This  unconscious  wish  may  be  so 
hostile  to  the  conscious  desire  of  making  a  complimen- 
tary speech  that  it  completely  changes  the  remark,  which 
was  intended  to  be  ingratiating,  into  a  statement  most 
uncomplimentary.  In  this  case  we  clearly  see  the  un- 
conscious element  in  the  conscious  act  and  the  fact  that 
it  was  caused  by  the  unconscious  thought,  i.e.  wish.  Un- 
conscious thoughts,  then,  do  cause  actions  which  are 
entirely  unconscious,  as  are  the  mannerisms,  and  also 
actions  which  contain  an  unconscious  element,  as  do  all 
blunders  or  actions  erroneously  carried  out.  Find  and 
study  the  unconscious  elfement  in  your  conscious  actions, 
and  you  take  a  step  toward  the  understanding  of  your 
own  unconscious. 

It  may  be  said  that  a  great,  indeed  by  far  the  great- 
est, part  of  our  several  actions  and  behaviours  and  our 
aggregate  conduct  is  composed  of  this  unconscious  ele- 
ment. Education  in  the  future  will,  I  think,  enable 
teachers  to  disentangle  these  unconscious  elements  from 
the  actions  of  their  pupils,  and  thus  be  able  to  handle 
them  better.  In  the  still  more  distant  future,  direct  in- 
struction will,  I  believe,  be  given  to  the  pupil  in  the 
mechanisms  by  which  this  disengagement  may  take 
place,  and  then  it  will  be  found  that  the  actual  absorp- 
tion of  cultural  material  by  the  pupil  will  be  easy  and 
natural  and  the  exercise  of  the  faculties,  which  is  now 
such  uphill  work,  will  be  the  gratifying  relaxation  of 


THE  SOURCE  OF  THOUGHTS  87 

tensions  directed  to  this  very  aim,  satisfactions  and  ful- 
filments of  unconscious  wishes  which  can,  with  the 
proper  understanding,  be  aligned  with  the  conscious 
wishes. 

The  nearest  we  can  come  to  the  disengagement  of  the 
unconscious  factor  from  the  conscious  in  the  behaviour 
of  the  pupil  is  to  talk  with  him  about  the  purposes  and 
results  of  his  action,  and  the  relation  between  aim  and 
achievement,  to  find  out  ourselves  and  show  him  what  he 
is  consciously  striving  for  and  the  frequently  opposing 
end  which  he  is  unconsciously  attempting  to  gain. 
Analytic  study  of  certain  habits  generally  shows  that 
they  are  attempts  of  the  unconscious  to  gain  satisfac- 
tions of  extremely  infantile  desires  which  would  be  hotly 
repudiated  by  the  pupil  at  first,  but  finally  admitted  with 
a  salutary  effect  on  his  conduct  and  work. 

It  is  very  difficult  not  to  exceed  all  reasonable  limits 
in  writing  on  a  topic  which  opens  up  the  unconscious 
element  in  all  conscious  acts.  It  suggests,  for  instance, 
all  kinds  of  faulty  performances,  the  great  habitat  of 
which  is  the  schoolhouse,  and  every  kind  of  human 
blunder  which  habitat  everywhere.  It  also  suggests  an 
exposition  of  the  modern  theory  of  the  interpretation  of 
dreams,  which  are  a  conscious  mental  activity  caused  en- 
tirely by  the  unconscious  thought.  But  as  they  are  bet- 
ter classed  as  conscious  thoughts  and  are  not  really  acts, 
with  the  exception  of  that  sporadic  phenomenon  of  talk- 
ing in  one's  sleep,  I  have  mentioned  them  only  there.* 

•  §   14,  page  82 ;    also  see  the   author's  Man's   Unconscious   Conflict, 
page  144. 


88      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Summary 

The  conscious  and  the  unconscious  thought  and  act 
are  both  identified  and  distinguished,  and  their  relations 
discussed  in  detail,  showing  how  education  depends  on 
the  conscious  thought  being  able  to  act  as  a  causative 
factor  in  unconscious  thought  and  action,  and  how  the 
existence  of  any  specific  thought  in  the  mind  indicates 
its  origin  in  the  unconscious,  from  which  it  is  thrust  into 
consciousness  by  the  power  of  the  unconscious  wish. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   PARTIAL  TRENDS 

The  mechanisms  which  are  to  be  taken  up  in  the  next 
chapter  are  supplemented  by  the  partial  trends  which 
differ  slightly  in  the  opposite  sexes.  It  is  customary  to 
speak  of  the  stream  of  unconscious  desire  as  the  libido 
or  the  libido  trend.  It  should  not  be  thought  that,  be- 
cause this  word  was  chosen,  the  libido  is  solely  regarded 
as  being  a  crassly  sexual  concupiscence.  On  the  con- 
trary the  full  force  of  the  libido  may,  through  the 
power  of  sublimation,*  be  directed  exclusively  to  goals 
that  are  quite  apart  from  the  sexual.  This  dirigibility 
of  the  libido  distinguishes  the  higher  intellectual  person 
from  the  animal-level  human.  It  is  also  this  capacity 
for  sublimation  which  school  education  consciously  aims 
at  developing.  As  we  can  develop  the  capacity  for  sub- 
limation of  the  individual's  libido,  academic  education 
may  be  a  success.  If  we  could  not  do  it,  education  would 
be  a  failure. 

Sadism — Masochism 

Some  of  the  libido  is  regularly  found  existing  in  two 
pairs  of  attributes,  each  having  opposite  characteristics 
emanating  from  the  active  and  passive  form  of  the  same 
trend.     A  tendency  to   inflict  pain   and  a  pleasure  in 

*  See  pages  146  and  227. 
89 


90      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

inflicting  pain  upon  others  is  normally  found  in  all 
healthy  children  at  one  stage  in  the  development  of  their 
personality.  If  this  is  not  properly  outgrown,  or 
sloughed  off,  as  are  the  first  set  of  teeth  or  the  epithe- 
lial cells  of  the  skin,  the  persistence  of  it  into  the  age 
of  adulthood  is  an  abnormality  called  Sadism.  For  the 
Sadist  the  infliction  of  pain  is  essential  to  his  own  en- 
joyment of  the  pleasures  of  love.  This  is  not  to  say 
that  all  persons  finally  outgrow  this  tendency  all 
at  once  and  at  a  definite  date.  On  the  contrary,  most 
adults  continue  to  possess  a  certain  amount  of  sadistic 
characteristics  without  which  it  is  unlikely  that  they 
would  succeed  wherever  competition  enters  into  the  se- 
curing of  any  desired  aim.  For  a  person  absolutely 
without  sadistic  traits — in  other  words,  a  person  in  whom 
the  inevitable  sadistic  traits  had  been  completely  re- 
pressed— would  never  take  any  pleasure  in  winning  any 
sort  of  game,  nor  in  being  successful  in  any  competition 
whether  athletic  or  commercial.  He  could  never  shoot 
an  animal  for  food  or  hook  a  fish,  for  he  would  feel  so 
keenly  the  suffering  of  the  victim  as  to  prefer  to  refrain 
from  injuring  him  in  every  way.  Similarly  it  may  be  said 
of  all  the  partial  libido  trends  that  they  exist  in  both  direc- 
tions to  a  slight  extent  in  all  adults. 

The  partner  of  this  trait  of  sadism  is  known  as  MasO' 
chism.  An  out-and-out  Masochist  is  one  who  takes  the 
keenest  pleasure  not  in  inflicting  but  in  suffering  pain. 
The  true  masochist  must  suffer  in  order  to  get  pleasure. 
As  both  of  these  traits  concern  pain,  and  the  pleasure 
derived  from  inflicting  and  suffering  it,  they  are  called 
partial  libido  trends,  and  it  is  found  that  they  are  always 
paired  in  every  individual,  though  in  varying  proportions. 


SADISM— MASOCHISM  91 

And  it  is  easy  to  see  that  if  a  person  was  preponderatingly 
sadistic,  his  masochism  would  be  shoved  into  the  back- 
ground, and  vice  versa. 

It  is  less  easy  to  understand,  though  it  has  been  shown 
in  many  analyses  of  both  men  and  women,  that  a  desire 
to  inflict  pain,  deeply  repressed  into  the  unconscious,  may 
be  compensated  for  by  a  very  vivid  concern  about  other 
people's  not  suffering  pain.  Ardent  advocates  of  anti- 
vivisectionism  and  of  prevention  of  cruelty  to  animals  and 
to  children  are  quite  evidently  occupied  mentally  with  the 
idea  of  cruelty.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  creative  force 
expended  by  such  people  on  the  maintenance  of  the  idea 
of  cruelty.  For  cruelty  is  filling  their  minds  when  they 
tell  us  so  vehemently  that  cruelty  must  be  stopped.  The 
people  who  have  no  cruelty  in  their  hearts  never  think  of 
cruelty  at  all,  and  would  least  of  all  consume  their  nights 
and  days  in  an  attempt  to  keep  other  people  from  being 
cruel.  It  is  the  belief  of  such  persons  that,  in  order  to 
deter,  we  must  portray  in  hideous  lineaments.  The  anti- 
vivisectionists  have  minds  filled  with  cruelty,  albeit  nega- 
tive cruelty.  Their  cruelty  is  not  in  the  conscious  part  of 
their  minds,  but  in  the  unconscious.  They  are  themselves 
of  course  not  aware  of  this  unconscious  content  of  cruelty, 
this  repressed  sadism;  consciously  they  think  themselves 
to  be  paragons  of  tender-heartedness.  And  they  certainly 
are,  if  tender-heartedness  is  the  repression  of  cruelty.  In 
this  case  it  appears,  paradoxically,  that  the  more  (uncon- 
scious) cruelty,  the  more  (conscious)  kindness,  and  the 
more  effusively  kind  a  person  is,  the  more  is  he  compen- 
sating for  unconscious  sadism. 


92      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 
Exhibitionism 

This  pair  of  traits,  consisting  of  the  wish  to  hurt  and 
to  be  hurt,  is  paralleled  by  the  second  pair,  which  is  to 
see  and  to  be  seen.  This  appears  in  a  noticeable  degree 
in  children  but  normally  disappears  at  a  certain  stage  of 
development,  never  again  to  be  noticed  as  such,  much  as 
a  bar  of  gold  might  be  ground  into  grains  and  sprinkled 
in  the  sand  of  the  sea,  where  it  might  produce  but  a  faint 
lustre,  or  a  skein  of  brilliant  yarn,  which  is  used  as  a  single 
thread  among  a  hundred  in  the  weaving  of  a  fabric. 

For  all  children  have  a  desire  "  to  see  and  eke  for  to 
be  seye."  Teachers  and  parents  well  know  that,  while 
the  infant  has  no  inhibition  placed  on  his  showing  his 
entire  body  or  inspecting  that  of  anyone  else,  much  that 
is  usefully  done  in  later  years  is  at  least  partly  determined 
by  this  partial  libido  trend.  The  "  exhibitionists  "  and 
"  peeping  Toms  "  of  the  courts  are  persons  in  whom  this 
trait  has  not  been  broken  up  at  the  proper  time  before 
adolescence,  but  has  persisted  unchanged  or  amplified,  a 
mark  of  undeveloped  infantility. 

Artists  and  actors  are  examples  of  the  useful  and  pro- 
ductive control  of  this  partial  libido  trend.  The  actor  is 
rewarded  by  society  for  continuing  to  exhibit  his  body  and 
what  mentality  he  can,  while  the  artist  is  a  socially  ap- 
proved exhibitionist  of  the  second  degree,  showing  not  his 
physical  person  but  his  spiritual  qualities  (his  uncon- 
scious) through  the  medium  of  his  art. 

In  the  schoolroom  the  teacher  has  before  him  a  con- 
tinuous drajjia  of  only  partly  repressed  sadism  and  ex- 
hibitionism, which  it  is  his  duty  to  ignore  as  far  as  possi- 
ble and  to  eradicate  chiefly  by  the  substitution  of  interests 


AMBIVALENCE  93 

that  direct  the  attention  of  the  child  away  from  self  and 
toward  things  and  the  relations  between  them. 

Ambivalence 

A  characteristic  of  unconscious  mentality  which  is  based 
on  an  essential  quality  of  the  physiological  structure  is 
known  as  ambivalence.  It  roughly  corresponds  to  oppo- 
sition and  antagonism,  in  the  good  senses  of  those  terms. 
The  body,  when  not  comparatively  relaxed  as  it  is  in 
sleep  is  maintained  in  any  position  by  virtue  of  the  op- 
posed muscles,  pairs  of  which  in  contrary  tension  with 
varying  strains  constantly  keeping  each  limb  in  the  desired 
position.  If  one  of  the  pair  should  be  suddenly  paralysed 
the  limb  would  be  forcibly  flexed  in  the  other  direction 
by  the  tension  of  the  one  not  paralysed  and  the  posture 
would  come  to  an  end. 

It  is  quite  analogous  in  the  matter  of  sensations  and 
perceptions.  We  have,  for  instance,  a  sensation  of  yellow 
from  an  orange  only  by  virtue  of  the  other  colours  which 
surround  it.  If  the  experiment  were  made  of  putting  an 
orange  close  enough  to  each  eye  to  fill  the  entire  field  of 
vision,  we  should  find  that  the  orange  colour  finally  gave 
way  and  we  had  no  colour  sensation  whatever.  It  may 
similarly  be  said  that  consciousness  of  any  quality  depends 
upon  the  constant  substitution  or  replacement  of  that 
quality  by  another.  The  same  quality  cannot  endure  and 
remain  conscious.  With  an  absolute  monotone  dinning  in 
our  ears  we  finally  become  unconscious  of  tone  as  such, 
with  the  same  odour  assailing  our  noses  unchanged  we 
soon  become  oblivious  of  any  odour. 

It  is  interestingly  and  instructively  analogous  with  re- 


94      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

gard  to  the  emotions.  These  states  of  mind  are  regarded 
by  the  newer  psychology  more  as  states  of  matter  than 
they  have  previously  been  regarded  by  the  older  mental 
science.  Thus,  the  emotion  of  fear  is  now  considered  to 
consist  of  minute  physical  contractions  of  the  very  mus- 
cles which  would  be  used  in  flight.  In  other  words,  fear 
IS  a  physical  preparation  for  flight.  The  importance  of 
this  fact  for  us  in  the  present  study  is  that  what  we  con- 
sciously note  in  ourselves  as  the  effects  of  fear  or  the  sen- 
sation of  fear  is  registered  in  the  unconscious  as  muscle 
contraction  and  respiratory  and  circulatory  changes  which 
accompany  actual  flight.  Thus,  a  fear,  to  use  Frink's 
words,*  is  an  "  unfled  flight "  and  anger  is  an  "  unfought 
fight."  In  suffering  the  emotion  of  fear,  we  are  in  a  con- 
dition affecting  not  only  our  consciousness  but  our  uncon- 
scious, a  condition  which  may  be  described  as  a  violent 
conflict  between  the  former  and  the  latter.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  note  the  contrary  effects  of  two  opposite  actions 
of  persons  who  are  afraid.  If  they  take  active  means  to 
escape  from  the  observed  danger,  the  bodily  sensations 
accompanying  the  emotion  of  fear  promptly  cease.  The 
action  of  running  is  carried  out  externally  and  conscious- 
ness is  absorbed  in  the  flight.  Thus  the  conflict  which  ex- 
isted or  might  have  existed  between  conscious  reasoning 
about  the  senselessness  of  fear  and  the  unconscious  con- 
traction of  numerous  muscles  is  immediately  brought  to 
an  end.  The  individual  is  united  body  and  mind.  Union 
of  body  and  mind  always  produces  action.  Perfect  action 
implies  union. 

In  the  other  case  where  fear  occurs  to  a  person  who  is 
unable  to  take  any  action  the  result  is  a  conflict  whose  ef- 

*  Morbid  Fears  and  Compulsions,  page  254. 


AMBIVALENCE  95' 

fects  may  be  seen  in  every  such  case  quite  clearly.  Such 
a  person's  limbs  move  convulsively,  the  blood  leaves  his 
face  to  go  to  his  muscles  where  it  is  needed  in  case  of 
their  violent  use,  and  his  respiration  becomes  short  and 
shallow,  necessitating  frequent  compensation  in  deep  sighs. 

Fear,  then,  is  flight.  It  is  a  flight  that  is  carried  out 
in  miniature  with  the  body  in  chains,  so  to  speak,  and  un- 
able to  move.  It  is  a  chained  man  struggling  to  free  him- 
self from  chains.  In  a  sense,  then,  fear  is  a  state  of  mind 
imposed  upon  us  by  society.  Instinctively  as  animals  we 
should  in  similar  circumstances  flee  or  attaclc  the  fancied 
cause  of  our  fear,  but  not  fear  it.  Society,  in  checking  the 
flight  or  aggressiveness,  has  paralysed  the  outward,  but 
it  could  not  the  inward,  motions.  Like  all  other  veneers 
of  society,  fear  is  merely  superficial.  The  agitation  of  the 
act  of  fear  is  potent  witness  to  its  not  really  affecting  the 
instinctive  unconscious  elements  of  our  personality. 

In  like  manner  anger  is  but  the  repressed  action  of 
fighting.  Wrath  is  thus  said  to  be  swallowed,  the  ex- 
pression indicating  the  popular  and  correct  idea  that  the 
action  is  retained  within  the  organism.  Similarly  hate 
is  but  retained  or  repressed  murder,  and  love  but  an  un- 
realized embrace.  If,  then,  it  is  clearly  understood  how 
physically  conditioned  are  all  the  emotions,  it  will  be  seen 
that  a  classification  of  them  would  be  quite  rational  if 
based  upon  the  types  of  actions  which  are  therein  in- 
ternalized, so  to  speak.  We  may  some  day  go  so  far  as 
to  name  and  classify  the  emotions  according  to  the  move- 
ments made  in  externalizing  the  actions  which  are  in- 
ternalized by  the  emotions,  or  even  according  to  the  mus- 
cles or  groups  of  muscles  used.  (My  very  soul's  all  fist 
for  his  face.) 


96      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Realizing,  then,  that  all  emotions  are  but  restrained 
activity  (which  is  equivalent  to  curbed  desire),  one  can 
easily  see  how  the  principle  of  ambivalence  mentioned  at 
the  beginning  of  this  section  applies  to  the  emotions.  For 
not  only  is  all  motion  physical  and  of  the  muscular  type 
(possibly  it  would  be  better  to  say  that  all  muscles  neces- 
sarily function  according  to  the  principles  of  mechanics, 
of  which  the  lever  with  its  power  weight  and  fulcrum  is 
the  fundamental  type),  but  it  all  depends  upon  the  effort 
and  a  force  or  object  resisting  it. 

Thus  it  is  easy  to  understand  the  ambivalence  or  dual 
nature  of  the  emotions  and  the  apparent  paradoxes  which 
they  produce.  Thus  anger  being  only  the  suppressed 
form  of  fight,  it  happens  very  frequently  that  the  fighters, 
after  the  fight,  forget  their  anger  and  become  friends 
again.  At  least  that  is  very  frequently  observed  with 
children.  The  actual  fighting  is  what  was  desired;  the 
muscles  craved  use.  When  this  desire  is  satisfied,  there  is 
naturally  and  instinctively  no  motive  for  fighting.  I  am 
persuaded  that  all  remaining  rancour  shown  in  civilized 
peoples  must  come  from  an  incompleteness  of  the  satis- 
faction gained  in  the  fight  on  account  of  the  fighters  not 
letting  themselves  out  with  sufficient  abandon.  A  real 
good  fight  is  a  satisfying  fight  and  will  last  until  idleness 
makes  muscles  fidgety. 

Love  and  hate  are  similarly  ambivalent  toward  each 
other.  Not  only  does  one  approve  and  disapprove  an- 
other person  for  qualities  some  of  which  are  bad  and 
others  good,  as  everyone  is  a  mixture  of  qualities  good 
and  bad,  but  one  instinctively  (that  is,  unconsciously) 
loves  and  hates  the  same  person  at  the  same  time  wholly 
and  completely.     The  convertibility  of  the  one  emotion 


AMBIVALENCE  97 

so  quickly  and  easily  into  its  opposite  is  sufficient  proof 
of  the  fundamental  ambivalence  of  all  emotions.  Further- 
more, if  emotions  are  but  condensed  motions,  and  if  the 
emotions  must  have  some  mental  content  quite  as  much  as 
movements  of  the  body  require  some  physical  opposition, 
it  is  quite  conceivable  that  if  the  outlet  for  these  activities 
towards  a  person  is  dammed  in  one  way,  say  the  love  way, 
it  will  seek  expression  in  the  opposite  way,  particularly 
if  there  be  no  middle  course.  And  with  respect  to  the 
vehement  attention  necessarily  given  in  love  there  can 
be  no  other  way,  if  love  is  denied,  than  vehement  hate. 
Indifference  would  simply  mean  directing  the  emotional 
activities  toward  another  person,  who  also  would  be  the 
recipient  of  love  or  hate  according  to  circumstances. 

This  fact  is  of  the  greatest  importance  to  parents  and 
teachers,  in  understanding  the  actions  of  their  children  and 
the  pupils  entrusted  to  their  care.  When  it  is  realized 
by  teachers  that  the  love-hate  relation  indicates  a  high 
degree  of  personal  interest  and  that,  with  children  par- 
ticularly, hate  can  be  readily  changed  into  love,  it  will 
be  much  easier  for  the  teacher  to  get  on  with,  and  be  loved 
by,  the  pupil.  If  the  child  likes  or  dislikes  the  teacher 
exceedingly,  it  is  because  the  child  particularly  affects  the 
teacher  and  this  affection  is  naturally  quite  ambivalent, 
and  according  to  the  logical  reasoning  on  true  or  false 
premises  may  turn  out  either  in  what  we  call  love  or  hate. 

Ambivalence  is  thus  clearly  a  fundamental  attribute 
of  all  nature,  including  human  nature.  Misconduct  in  the 
home  or  disorder  in  the  schoolroom  is  frequently  caused 
by  this  convertibility  of  conduct  from  one  kind  into  its 
opposite,  a  condition  which  both  parent  and  teacher  should 
know,  as  it  will  remove  any  and  all  ground  for  resent- 


98      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

ment  against  the  children  for  the  peccadilloes,  particularly 
as  teachers  or  parents  usually  make  some  inference  as 
to  the  motive  of  the  naughtiness  and  are  themselves  moved 
to  resentment  thereby.  Then,  too,  we  now  know  that  a 
strong  feeling  for  or  against  a  particular  pupil  is  equally 
a  sign  of  a  strong  interest  or  affection  on  the  teacher's 
part.  Let  no  teacher  say  that  he  or  she  is  specially 
troubled  by  such  and  such  a  boy  or  girl  without  intending 
to  betray  a  greater  interest  in  that  boy  or  girl  than  the 
teacher  consciously  thinks  he  has. 

Summary 

The  partial  trends  of  the  libido  are  the  tendencies 
toward  looking  and  being  looked  at,  the  active  and  passive 
phases  of  the  same  trend,  and  the  tendency  to  inflict  pain 
upon  others  and  to  enjoy  the  pain  inflicted  by  others  on 
self.  Ambivalence  is  the  fundamental  structural  charac- 
teristic of  all  organic  nature,  and  is  seen  in  the  interchange 
of  opposing  emotions.  Fear  is  described  as  an  internally 
fled  flight,  and  anger  as  a  subjectively  fought  fight. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   MECHANISMS 

A  MECHANISM  IS  a  manner  in  which  the  unconscious  men- 
tality functions  and  in  which  it  influences,  if  it  does  not 
entirely  control,  the  conscious  life  of  the  individual.  The 
mechanisms  are  as  rigidly  determined  by  natural  laws 
as  are  the  physiological  functions,  from  which  indeed  they 
are  derived.  The  newer  psychology  is  the  first  to  recog- 
nize the  effects  of  these  mechanisms  upon  conscious  life 
and  to  attempt  to  describe  and  classify  them,  and  show 
their  universal  and  constant  operation  upon  all  conscious 
acts  and  thoughts. 

Old  and  New  Psychology 

In  the  old  psychology  association  of  ideas,  attention, 
will,  memory  and  discussions  as  to  the  nature  of  percep- 
tion and  the  impossibility  of  pure  sensation  were  the 
topics,  and  the  ingenious  adaptations  of  these  concepts  to 
concrete  life  were  the  admiration  of  some  students  and  the 
source  of  a  great  deal  of  bewilderment  on  the  part  of 
some  others.  The  older  psychologies  had  next  to  nothing 
to  say  about  sexual  matters  or  about  love.  James  has 
about  one  page  out  of  the  1,400  pages  of  his  Principles 
of  Psychology.  The  newer  psychology  is  practically  cen- 
tered on  love  and  its  different  manifestations  in  child, 
adolescent  and  adult  life.    And  while  the  older  pschology 

99 


lOo    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

was  more  a  descriptive  one,  giving  accounts  of  successive 
states  of  conscious  mind,  the  newer  psychology  is  a 
dynamic  one  and  studies  the  impulses,  instincts,  motives 
and  causes  of  thought  and  action,  not  only  in  conscious- 
ness but  in  the  unconscious  as  well,  thus  taking  into  account 
a  vast  sphere  of  mental  activity  hitherto  almost  completely 
ignored.  There  were  very  good  reasons  for  ignoring 
it,  too,  just  because  it  contains  a  great  deal  of  what  con- 
scious life  regards  as  unpleasant,  not  to  say  even  intoler- 
able. But  it  is  thought  that  if  science  is  to  investigate, 
she  must  have  nothing  closed  to  her.  Nothing  but  a 
complete  survey  of  what  is  visible  will  satisfy  modern 
science,  which  is  yet  surrounded  by  the  invisible  and  inscru- 
table. The  most  materialistic  view  does  not  see  all,  can- 
not explain  the  difference  between  animate  and  inanimate 
nature,  no  matter  how  completely  it  mechanizes  thought. 
It  is  our  duty  to  look  at  as  much  as  we  can  see,  and 
look  at  it  fearlessly.  The  story  of  the  tree  of  knowledge 
of  good  and  evil  is  a  myth  which  shows  a  desire  on  the 
part  of  the  people  formulating  it — a  desire  to  be  excused 
from  exact  knowledge,  which  is  acquired  only  by  pains- 
taking effort.  It  is  also  a  desire  to  be  allowed  to  con- 
tinue to  picture  in  the  imagination  the  gratification  of 
desire,  where  desire  can  be  gratified  without  physical  ef- 
fort, or  without  mental  effort  of  the  controlled  or  directed 
variety,  but  with  only  the  spontaneous  functioning  of  the 
ability  to  dream  dreams.  Science  has  to  study  the  pheno- 
mena of  thunderstorms  as  well  as  the  theory  of  light,  of 
decay  as  well  as  of  growth,  of  disease  as  well  as  health, 
where  indeed  it  finds  no  very  sharp  dividing  line,  and  it 
has  to  study  the  invisible  as  well  as  the  visible,  the  un- 
intuitable  as  well  as  that  which  may  be  intuited,  that  of 


OLD  AND  NEW  PSYCHOLOGY  loi 

which  we  cannot  have  direct  perception  quite  as  much  as 
that  of  which  we  have. 

There  is  a  psychological  analogy  in  the  questions  about 
where,  on  the  one  hand,  the  child  comes  from,  invariably 
asked  by  children  either  of  themselves  or  of  others,  where 
other  things  come  from,  and  where,  on  the  other  hand, 
ideas  and  emotions  come  from.  Both  depend  on  man's 
natural  curiosity  about  the  existence  of  things  before  and 
after  they  are  sensed.  About  the  existence  of  things  we 
cannot  see,  we  feel  certain  when  we  can  touch  them,  even 
if  they  are  invisible.  About  the  existence  of  mental 
states  or  activities  we  have  up  to  today  made  the  same  kind 
of  judgment  as  we  make  about  the  existence  of  the  flame 
of  the  candle  after  it  is  snuffed  out.  We  know  the  flame 
is  non-existent,  and  we  have  inferred,  on  some  such  analog- 
ical basis,  that  the  mental  activity,  because  not  perceptible 
when,  like  the  candle  flame,  it  vanished  from  our  sight, 
was  also  non-existent.  As  it  is  the  duty  of  science  to  study, 
by  means  of  their  effects,  the  existence  and  nature  of  things 
not  visible,  it  is  also  its  duty  to  investigate  things  not  per- 
ceptible, among  which  are  thoughts  when  they  are  not  in 
consciousness. 

A  mental  image  of  a  certain  rural  scene  with  which  I 
am  very  familiar  comes  before  my  mind's  eye  with  great 
vividness.  At  the  same  time  I  have  also  a  sort  of  abridged 
edition  of  the  pleasure  I  had  when  I  actually  saw  the  place 
twenty-five  years  ago.  The  visual  image  appears  and  dis- 
appears absolutely  without  my  control.  The  same  thing 
occurs,  but  with  more  feeling  of  control,  with  names,  num- 
bers, etc.  I  think  I  can  call  them  up  at  will.  The  sight 
that  has  been  seen  even  once  is  in  the  mind.  It  has  the 
same  existence,  in  every  respect,  as  it  would  have  if  it 


rmRARY 


102    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

were  seen,  only  it  Is  not  seen.  It  is  like  the  light  waves  in 
ether  or  the  sound  waves  in  air.  The  wind  may  be  blow- 
ing through  the  bare  branches  of  a  forest  and  the  sound 
waves,  or  undulations,  or  rhythms  of  condensation  and 
rarefaction  of  the  air  may  be  there  just  the  same,  but 
there  is  no  sound  if  there  is  no  human  ear  there  to  trans- 
late those  vibrations  into  sound.  Just  as  the  ear  Is  to  the 
air  vibrations,  turning  them  into  sound,  so  is  conscious- 
ness to  the  idea  and  turns  it  into  a  visual  auditory  or  other 
image.  And  just  as  the  air  waves  are  there  in  the  forest, 
or  the  thunderbolt  In  the  tempest,  and  are  not  sound  waves 
for  the  sole  reason  that  there  is  no  ear  to  hear  them,  and 
yet  they  are  perfectly  capable  of  being  heard  just  as  soon 
as  the  man  or  animal  comes  along;  so  the  idea  is  in  the 
part  of  the  mind  of  which  we  are  not  conscious  and  exists 
in  that  unrecognized  part  In  exactly  the  same  form, 
barring  only  the  condition  that  it  Is  not  cognized. 

Just  as  we  know  that  there  is  a  world  full  of  things 
which  we  cannot  see,  and  know  we  cannot  see  either  the 
things  themselves  or  even  pictures  of  them,  so  now  In  this 
twentieth  century  we  know  that  the  mental  activities  which 
enter  our  consciousness  come  into  it  out  of  a  world  of 
mental  activities  which  each  of  us  has  In  his  own  person- 
ality, and  that  this  world  of  mental  activities  is  as  large 
in  comparison  with  consciousness  as  Is  the  world  of  all 
outdoors  large  in  comparison  with  the  confines  of  our  own 
private  and  personal,  individual  Indoors.  Just  as  every- 
thing that  exists  in  the  world  at  the  present  time  exists 
out  of  doors  to  us  except  what  is  in  our  own  house,  so 
everything  that  has  ever  happened  within  the  range  of 
our  sensation  exists  for  us  in  that  outdoor  world  of  our 
unconscious  personality  which  surrounds  and  upholds  the 


OLD  AND  NEW  PSYCHOLOGY  103 

little  domicile  in  which  our  consciousness  is  at  home.  In 
a  new  sense  we  may  say  that  each  person  lives  in  a  world 
of  his  own  isolated  from  every  other  person's  world. 
This  world  is  the  world  of  his  own  mental  activities, — at 
one  time  conscious,  but  now  unconscious, — a  world  of 
which  ordinarily  he  knows  as  little  as  the  average  person 
does  of  the  earth  and  its  different  continents  and  oceans. 
As  we  walk  on  a  plain  the  horizon  is  about  twelve  miles 
away  from  our  eyes  at  their  height  of  about  five  feet. 
This  is  a  very  small  part  of  the  entire  surface  of  the 
earth,  which  is  four  million  times  as  great.  And  if  this  in- 
dividual does  not  travel  there  is  not  one  chance  in  four 
million  of  his  knowing  at  first  hand  even  the  existence  of 
the  rest  of  the  earth. 

About  the  same  probability  has  always  existed  that  we 
should  ever  become  aware  of  the  fact  that  we  had  any 
mental  activity  of  which  we  are  not  conscious.  I  am  quite 
aware  that  we  are  unequally  conscious  of  different  things 
— for  instance,  those  objects  near  the  circumference  of  the 
field  of  vision  we  do  not  so  clearly  cognize  as  those  right 
in  the  centre  of  the  field.  The  dimly  or  faintly  cognized 
are  said  by  some  writers  to  be  subconscious  or  only  partly 
conscious.  What  I  refer  to  is  the  absolute  non-existence 
in  consciousness  of  certain  ideas,  and  indeed  most  ideas 
for  the  greater  part  of  the  time,  and  their  continuous 
existence  in  an  absolutely  unconscious  state,  but  their  com- 
plete existence  and  activity  in  every  respect  save  the  one 
exception  of  their  not  being  in  consciousness. 

I  have  given  (page  23)  an  illustration  of  a  mental 
activity  which  was  utterly  unconscious,  but  which  formed 
an  integral  part  of  a  stream  of  consciousness  which  was 
very  vivid.    I  offer  here  an  example  of  a  sensation  which, 


104    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

by  the  power  of  the  unconscious  wish,  has  been  rendered 
imperceptible,  that  is,  unable  for  a  time  to  enter  conscious- 
ness. I  am  looking  at  a  table  full  of  objects,  and  am 
looking  for  my  box  of  matches  which  I  know  is  there  in 
full  view,  though  I  am  unable  to  see  it.  I  am  conscious, 
in  varying  degree  of  vividness,  of  book  or  paper  knife  or 
inkstand  or  newspaper  or  what  not.  Yet  there  I  stand 
totally  unconscious  of  the  box  of  matches  with  which  I 
wish  to  light  a  pipe.  The  match  box  is  making  on  my 
physical  organism  the  same  effect  in  every  respect  save 
one  as  if  I  were  conscious  of  it.  On  the  rods  and  cones 
of  my  retinae  it  is  producing  the  same  commotion  as  the 
wind  in  the  forest  branches  with  no  ear  there  to  hear  It. 

There  is  of  course  a  cause  why  this  match  box  should 
be  concealed  from  my  consciousness.  I  have  Injured  my 
nerves  by  smoking  too  much  and  my  unconscious  mental 
activities  a^e  in  a  sense  uniting  in  an  attempt  to  make  me 
smoke  less.  Does  it  seem  that  we  are  merely  using  rhetor- 
ical figures  in  speaking  of  the  unconscious  mental  activi- 
ties uniting  to  produce  an  effect?  Are  we  merely  person- 
ifying what  has  not  a  personal  Individuality  as  we  per- 
sonify the  storm  when  we  say  It  strode  across  the  valley 
and  climbed  up  the  mountain  side  ?  On  the  contrary,  we 
are  speaking  literally  and  not  figuratively  about  the  ele- 
ments out  of  which  the  real  human  personality  Is  actually 
made.  But  when  I  stand  In  front  of  my  study  table 
looking  for,  but  not  seeing,  my  box  of  matches,  I  am 
giving  a  good  example  of  the  mental  state  which  is  uncog- 
nized  or  unconscious,  and  which  even  so  is  making  on  the 
nervous  system  as  much  impression  as  if  it  were  cognized 
or  conscious. 

If  one   state   of  mind   can  be  unconscious   and  yet 


OLD  AND  NEW  PSYCHOLOGY  105 

operative,  any  and  all  others  can  be  and  probably  are  quite 
as  active  and  quite  as  unconscious.  In  fact,  modern  psy- 
chology shows  us  that  all  the  mental  states  we  ever  had, 
and  possibly  some  we  never  had  ourselves  but  inherited, 
are  collected  In  the  part  of  the  mind  of  which  we  are 
unconscious  and  there,  organizing  themselves  under  the 
urgencies  of  the  instincts,  constitute  a  body  of  mentality 
to  which  has  been  given  the  name  of  the  unconscious. 
Other  proof  of  the  causative  activity  of  the  unconscious 
factor  of  our  minds  is  not  lacking.  In  fact,  not  only  is  it 
not  lacking,  but  it  is  so  copious  that  it  is  a  wonder  it  was 
not  seen  centuries  before. 

We  began,  at  the  outset  of  this  section,  by  regarding 
consciousness  and  the  unconscious  as  a  continuum,  in  which 
it  is  impossible  to  say  exactly  where  the  one  stops  and  the 
other  begins,  but  in  which  there  are  states  so  profoundly 
unconscious  that  they  never  can  be  reached,  so  to  speak, 
by  the  light  of  consciousness,  yet  they  have  a  controlling 
effect  on  the  conscious  life.  It  is  more  pictorial,  however, 
to  regard  the  relations  of  the  unconscious  to  the  conscious 
life  more  as  those  existing  between  two  levels  of  society 
in  humanity.  Take,  for  example,  the  highest  which  we 
may  Imagine  as  representing  a  king,  and  the  lowest  which 
represents  a  dweller  In  a  slum  in  the  king's  capital  city. 
The  submerged  tenth  does  wish  to  see  and  interview  the 
king,  would  like  in  short  to  live  on  the  Easy  Street  where 
the  king's  palace  is,  and,  like  the  militant  suffragettes, 
continually  makes  attempts  to  enter  the  king's  presence. 
But  there  are  many  persons  between  the  king  and  the 
lower  level  of  society,  effectually  keeping  them  out  from 
his  presence. 

We  must  imagine  that  there  are  mental  activities  as 


io6    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

much  undesired  by  the  conscious  mind  of  every  one  of  us 
as  are  the  lower  levels  of  society  undesired  by  the  king, 
and  that  these  mental  activities  are  kept  down  in  the 
unconscious  portion  of  our  minds.  If  ever  they  come  in 
by  any  chance,  they  are  immediately  thrust  back,  just 
as  the  man  or  woman  of  the  lowest  stratum  of  society 
would  be  hustled  out  of  the  king's  presence  by  appointed 
officials,  if  perchance  such  an  undesirable  found  entrance 
to  the  royal  presence.  The  undesirable  person  is  crowded 
back  out  of  the  royal  presence.  The  undesirable  thought 
is  "  repressed "  from  consciousness.  Both  are  contin- 
uously pushing  on  toward  the  place  from  which  they  have 
been  ejected. 

Why  Thoughts  Push  Outward 

The  reason  that  the  thoughts  are  pushing  out  toward 
consciousness  is  that  they  are  (as  is  all  mental  life)  con- 
cerned with  external  reality;  and  the  means  for  reaching 
external  reality  are  the  motions  and  activities  of  the  body, 
reports  of  which  are  immediately  made  to  consciousness 
by  the  afferent  sensory  nerves.  The  type  of  thoughts  most 
concerned  with  eternal  reality  is  that  which  would  quick- 
est change  external  reality  into  itself,  and  that  is  the  use  of 
matter  for  the  formation  of  new  and  more  individuals — 
in  other  words,  the  mental  activity  most  likely  to  come  up 
into  consciousness  is  that  which  is  concerned  with  repro- 
duction of  species.  This  is  the  case  because  the  reproduc- 
tive urge  is  the  one  which  is  the  most  perpetual  and  insis- 
tent, and  it  is  natural  that  thoughts  of,  or  based  on,  the 
action  of  reproduction  should  be  the  thoughts  most  spon- 
taneously arising  from  the  unconscious. 


THE  CENSOR  107 

The  Censor 

However,  as  the  development  of  human  society  has 
been  such  as  to  give  in  all  ages  and  places  a  greater  value 
to  the  performance  of  other  acts  than  the  instinctive  act 
of  procreation,  there  has  sprung  up  universally  a  resis- 
tance against  mere  reproducing  and  eating.  It  has  been 
universally  felt  that  a  race  devoted  to  those  two  aims 
solely  is  not  different  from  animals  of  lower  orders  in 
whom  there  is  no  other  activity  worthy  of  the  name.  But 
wherever  the  resistance  against  the  mere  following  of  the 
passions  called  animal  has  come  from,  it  exists  and  has 
been  the  cause  of  all  the  strictly  human  phases  of  human 
life.  We  are  not  concerned  here  with  the  origin  of  this 
difference  between  animals  and  man.  Here  we  have 
to  do  only  with  the  fact  of  it  and  the  way  it  is  accomplished 
by  the  conscious  mind.  There  are  not  plenty  of  conscious 
resistances  against  crass  sexuality.  In  fact,  the  resistances 
against  a  purely  animal  life  are  those  of  conscious- 
ness primarily.  The  barrier  set  against  purely  animal 
thoughts,  which  continually  strive  to  come  into  conscious- 
ness both  in  thoughts  and  in  acts  without  thoughts,  has 
been  fitly  compared  to  a  censor  who  examines  communi- 
cations between  people  and  deletes  matter  which  is  con- 
sidered unsuitable  for  communication.  So  It  is  customary 
to  say  that  the  thoughts  (wishes)  of  the  unconscious  which 
are  solely  concerned  with  material  sustenance  are  cen- 
sored. And  in  order  to  pass  the  censor  they  are  disguised 
or  costumed. 


io8     THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Mechanisms  as  Modes  of  Psychic  Action 

What  causes  us  to  see  a  similarity  between  some  par- 
ticular person's  face  and  some  animal's  head?  Or 
between  a  camel  and  a  ship?  These  similarities  are  all 
very  plain.  The  person's  face  and  the  animal's  are  alike 
because  they  possess  certain  features  in  common — two 
eyes  (even  a  fish),  a  nose  (even  a  cat),  a  mouth  (even 
a  caterpillar),  and  so  on;  and  we  see  a  likeness  in  the 
^general  impression  because  it  really  is  there,  and  we  can 
become  conscious  of  it  at  once. 

There  are  other  similarities  based  on  an  identity  of  im- 
pressions and  by  most  people  perceived  below  the  thresh- 
old of  consciousness,  but  for  those  who  have  studied  the 
impression  analytically,  quite  consciously  perceptible.  A 
clear  example  of  this  is  the  quality  of  certain  language 
which  is  called  onomatopoeia,  a  sort  of  imitation,  by  the 
quality  of  the  word,  of  qualities  of  things  denoted.  Such 
a  quahty  of  the  words  causes  them  to  have  a  peculiar 
appropriateness  to  represent  certain  ideas.  This  poignant 
character  of  certain  words  when  used  in  certain  connec- 
tions is  due  to  the  fact  that  theirsoundortheirkinaesthetic 
effect  while  being  spoken  is  like  the  sound  or  the  feeling 
of  the  things  denoted. 

Much  of  the  charm  of  poetry  is  caused  by  this  type  of 
imitative  quality  not  only  in  the  ancient  languages,  where 
in  Greek, 

^aifiovir)   a^l   fjiev   olsat   ovdi   ffs   Xr/doo, 
Daimoni  |  e  a  |  ei  men  o  |  ieai  ou  |  de  se  |  letho 

a  line  consisting  almost  entirely  of  vowels,  very  well  repre- 
sents the  snarling  voice  of  the  enraged  Zeus,  or  in  Latin: 


MECHANISMS  AS  PSYCHIC  ACTION     109 

Atque  rot'ts  summas  levibus  perlahitur  undas, 

by  its  harmonies  represents  the  very  sound  of  the  lapping 
of  waves  on  the  bow  of  the  vessel,  but  also  in  English, 
where,  for  instance,  Coleridge  in  three  words  puts  vividly 
before  the  reader's  mind  the  sound  of  the  dropping  of 
water  on  the  deck  of  the  marooned  ship 

From  the  sails  the  dew  did  drip, 

and  where  Tennyson  represents  the  sounds  of  a  bright 
summer  afternoon  in : 

The  moan  of  doves  in  immemorial  elms 
And  murmuring  of  innumerable  bees. 

In  the  following  example  from  the  "  Ancient  Mariner  " 
the  feeling  of  the  words  in  the  throat  as  they  are  being 
uttered  is  very  like  the  feeling  which  they  describe : 

With  throats  unslaked,  with  black  lips  baked.* 

But  in  the  psychical  mechanism  which  I  will  first  men- 
tion the  identity  is  not  merely  a  passive  one  of  impression 
but  is  an  active  one  of  behaviour.  We  react  to  one  situa- 
tion as  we  would  to  another.  A  similarity  in  the  environ- 
ment produces  a  similarity  in  the  reaction  to  it,  more  or 
less  analogous  to  the  similarity  which  the  preceding  illus- 
trations show  between  the  sound  of  the  word  and  the 
sound  of  the  thing  denoted  by  the  word,  and  which,  even 
though  an  unperceived  similarity  for  most  people,  pro- 
duces a  different  reaction  or  attitude  toward  the  words 
themselves.     They  have  a  deeper  effect  simply  because 

*  Cf .  Tennyson:  "Laborious  Orient  Ivory,  sphere  in  sphere." 


no    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

they  set  in  motion  the  unconscious  perception  of  simi- 
larities. This  unconscious  perception  produces  a  con- 
scious result,  but  it  is  not  an  intellectual  process  when  it 
emerges  into  consciousness.  It  is  an  emotional  state  of 
diffused  pleasure,  having  as  a  basis  the  perceived  simi- 
larities. This  is  quite  in  accordance  with  the  genesis  of 
emotions,  for  the  majority  of  the  emotions  are  of  uncon- 
scious origin. 

Origin  of  Pleasure  from  Similarity 

We  see  that  this  must  be  so  if  we  imagine  how  the 
earliest  emotions  in  infancy  connected  with  the  self- 
preservative  instinct  took  place  at  the  time  of  the  second 
feeding  at  the  breast.  The  exhaustion  of  the  nutriment 
absorbed  in  the  infant's  system  after  the  first  feeding  pro- 
duced a  feeling  of  hunger  which  became  one  verging  upon 
pain,  and  the  restoring  of  the  infant  to  the  breast  for  its 
second  meal  produced  a  sensation  in  the  first  place  of 
similarity  as  so  many,  if  not  all,  of  the  sensations  of  touch, 
suckling,  deglutition  and  satiety  were  identical  with  those 
of  the  first  meal.  The  effect  on  the  infant  of  this  first 
and  second  experience  of  the  world  is  such  as  to  give  a 
very  strong  emotional  tone  of  pleasure  to  the  situation  of 
similarity  In  itself  and  to  cause  similarity  to  play  a  very 
important  part  in  causing  pleasure  in  after-life.  There  is 
also,  in  mere  similarity  of  situation,  an  ease  and  facility 
of  effort  which  creates  a  sense  of  superiority,  a  feeling  for 
which  the  ego  continually  strives,  so  that  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing to  find  it  governing  a  great  deal  of  later  choice.  The 
easy  act  is  the  one  which  gives  the  Individual  the  greater 
sense  of  power. 


IDENTIFICATION  iii 

In  the  course  of  development  of  the  child's  psyche  there 
comes  a  time  when,  by  virtue  of  the  cognizance  of  similar- 
ity, or  by  analogy,  the  child  sees  the  similarity  between 
itself  and  other  things,  persons  and  children.  It  sees  the 
likeness  between  a  bundle  of  rags  and  a  doll,  between  a 
stick  and  a  boat,  between  a  stone  and  a  dock.  It  sees  the 
analogy  between  persons  and,  of  prime  importance  here, 
between  itself  and  other  persons.  Possibly  through 
learning  the  use  of  the  words  "  me  "  and  "  my,"  it  con- 
fuses these  ideas  and  gets  the  notion  that  "  what  is  my 
must  be  me,"  a  very  natural  confusion  and  one  common 
to  all  nations  and  ages,  and  quite  parallel  with  the  notion 
that  there  is  some  essential  causal  connection  between 
the  word  and  the  existence  of  the  thing  it  denotes. 

But  if  "  my  "  be  "  me,"  then  my  father  is  me,  my 
mother  is  me,  my  dog  is  me,  my  horse  is  me,  my  pail  and 
shovel  in  the  ocean's  sand  are  me,  and  it  is  but  a  step  from 
that  to  the  identification  of  myself  with  anything  under 
heaven.  The  particular  harm  in  one's  thus  identifying 
himself  with  other  persons  or  with  things  is  that  one 
attributes  the  same  fortune  or  misfortune  to  both.  The 
inmate  who  identifies  himself  with  Napoleon  or  Jesus 
Christ  is  doing  nothing  different  from  the  child  who  iden- 
tifies itself  with  its  doll,  but  he  is  doing  it  to  so  extravagant 
a  degree  that  we  make  him  an  inmate. 

Identification 

The  mechanism  called  identification,  based  on  similar- 
ity, is  an  unconscious  mental  process  which  underlies 
a  great  deal  of  conscious  thinking  and  acting.  One 
identifies    oneself    with    other    persons    and    things  in 


112    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

such  a  way  that  those  persons  or  things  are  regarded 
as  a  part  of  oneself.  Indeed  it  is,  when  we  consider  it 
closely,  a  difficult  problem  to  decide  where  the  average 
person  conceives  his  ego  to  end  and  the  external  world 
to  begin.  Physically  our  digestion  identifies  our  food 
with  our  bodies  literally.  Mentally  we  regard  certain 
parts  of  ourselves  as  more  intimately  ourselves  than 
other  parts.  For  example  the  attached  parts  of  our 
finger  nails  are  more  closely  a  part  of  us  than  are  the 
unattached  parts  which  we  cut  off  from  time  to  time  and 
our  hair  is  not  so  intimately  a  part  of  ourselves  as  our 
eyelashes.  Furthermore,  some  of  our  possessions  we  iden- 
tify with  ourselves  much  more  than  we  do  others.  A 
pocket-knife  or  a  purse,  one  suit  of  clothes  or  another, 
or  in  the  case  of  a  wealthy  man  one  of  his  residences  may, 
to  use  a  purely  figurative  expression,  "  contain  more  of 
him  "  than  another.  He  has  "  put  more  of  himself  into  " 
one  place  than  another.  And  so  on  with  all  the  things 
with  which  we  have  any  relation  whatever.  Many  per- 
sons have  written  lists  of  the  ten  or  a  hundred  "  best 
books,"  which  are  only  expressions  of  identifications 
which  they  have  made  between  themselves  and  the  books. 
From  our  earliest  years  we  identify  ourselves  with  per- 
sons. In  our  desires,  both  conscious  and  unconscious,  we 
identify  ourselves  on  the  one  hand  with  our  fathers  and  on 
the  other  with  our  mothers.  Later  there  is  a  perfectly 
normal  identification  in  the  love  we  feel  toward  our  life 
partners.  A  curious  and  important  fact  not  generally 
known  is  that  when  at  a  later  date  we  have  ceased  to  iden- 
tify ourselves  with  our  parents  as  they  are  at  present,  we 
still  retain  in  the  unconscious  the  original  identification 
which  we  formed  at  an  early  date  with  the  parent  as  he  or 


DEPTH  OF  VERY  EARLY  IMPRESSIONS     113 

she  then  was.  A  man,  for  instance,  who  at  the  age  of  five 
years  or  earlier  identified  himself  with  his  father,  and 
felt  like  him  in  every  respect  in  which  he  knew  him  and 
strove  to  imitate  him  in  all  ways,  will,  at  the  age  of  forty, 
still  maintain  in  his  unconscious  a  tendency  to  make  his 
identification  with  all  men  who  resembled  in  the  slightest 
degree  what  his  father  was  thirty-five  years  before. 

In  one  man  *  who  had  a  very  stern,  strict  and  aggres- 
sive father  and  identified  himself  with  this  early  form  in 
which  his  father  existed  for  him  even  to  the  extent  of 
acting  both  as  aggressive  father  in  his  desires  and  com- 
pliant submissive  environment  in  his  acts,  repeated  the 
compliant  submissive  element  of  that  combination  when- 
ever he  met  a  man  who  resembled  his  father  in  being  ag- 
gressive. He  would,  when  caught  unawares,  say  "  Yes, 
sir!  "  to  a  gruff  waiter,  or  meekly  obey  a  car  conductor 
uncivilly  yelling  to  the  passengers  to  "  move  forward." 
All  the  time,  however,  he  was  repeating  the  aggressive 
element  in  his  idea  of  what  a  man  should  be,  and,  wher- 
ever not  himself  intimidated,  was  acting  in  an  overbear- 
ing manner  toward  others,  thus  in  both  ways  repeating 
the  total  pattern  of  behaviour  at  the  age  of  forty,  a 
pattern  which  his  soul  had  had  stamped  on  it  at  the  age 
of  five  or  under,  by  the  particular  father  whom  he  hap- 
pened to  have  and  whom  he  came  to  know  through  the 
experiences  which  he  then  had  of  him. 

Depth  of  Very  Early  Impressions 

If  these  early  impressions  are  so  very  formative,  and 
so  very  lasting,  it  becomes  at  once  evident  that  they  must 

•Frink:  Morbid  Fears  and  Compulsions,  p.  212. 


114    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

be  reformed  as  early  In  the  child's  life  as  possible.  It  has 
not  been  found  possible  to  do  much  in  the  way  of  influ- 
encing the  individual's  unconscious  before  the  age  of 
puberty,  except  through  the  parents.  In  this  case  it  is 
really  the  parents  who  should  be  educated,  for  they  alone 
by  their  actions  can  cause  the  early  impressions  of  their 
children,  so  important  for  their  later  welfare,  to  be  whole- 
some and  normal  and  prevent  the  damage  which  is  in- 
flicted then  and  does  not  have  its  full  force  sometimes  for 
over  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

Education  which  should  affect  this  very  vital  part  of 
the  individual's  life  should  of  course  be  directed  to  the 
child's  entire  environment  from  the  earliest  days  of  its 
existence.  As  it  is  at  present  quite  impossible  adequately 
to  control  this,  the  problem  for  education,  if  education  is 
to  be  thorough  and  penetrating,  is  to  take  the  child,  spiri- 
tually maimed  in  many  cases  by  its  early  environment, 
and  reshape  it  during  school  and  college  days  in  such  a 
way  as  to  remove  the  multitude  of  wrong  impressions 
which  are  inevitable  now  with  most  children  and  which 
affect  the  working  of  the  mechanisms  of  which  I  have 
already  mentioned  only  identification,  the  others  being 
much  less  simple  and  much  more  subtle  in  their  influence 
on  the  conscious  life.* 

Prim ary  Ide n tifi cations 

It  should  not  be  omitted  here  that  the  most  universal 
identification  is  that  of  the  boy  with  his  mother  (and  that 
of  the  girl  with  her  father),  an  identification  which, 
being  of  opposite  sex,  has  an  effect  not  only  upon  the 

♦  This  will  be  taken  up  in  greater  detail  in  the  next  chapter. 


IDENTIFICATIONS  IN  SCHOOL         115 

Individual's  choice  of  a  love  mate  but  also  on  the  way  in 
which  he  or  she  behaves  to  the  mate.  If  the  husband 
identifies  himself  with  his  mother  he  will  Identify  himself 
in  exactly  the  same  way  with  his  wife,  and  there  then 
results  In  his  psyche  an  objective  Identification  of  the  two 
persons,  mother  and  wife.  When,  therefore,  a  husband 
behaves  toward  his  wife  as  a  child  should  toward  its 
mother,  expecting  from  the  wife  in  all  ways  exactly  the 
kind  of  tenderness  which  he  originally  received  from  his 
mother,  he  fails  to  act  in  every  respect  as  a  man  should 
act  toward  his  wife.  The  same  statement  can  be  made, 
mutatis  mutandis,  about  the  attitude  of  the  wife  toward 
her  husband,  determined  as  it  Is  by  her  identification,  first 
of  herself  with  her  father  and  with  her  husband  and 
then  of  her  father  and  her  husband. 

Identifications  in  School 

It  may  be  asked  at  this  point  what  can  be  done  by  the 
teacher  in  school  to  correct  the  undesirable  element  In 
these  identifications.  In  college  the  faculty  adviser  can 
of  course  go  specifically  into  the  details  of  this  and  the 
other  mechanisms,  but  in  school  that  will  of  course  be 
impossible.  But  the  teacher.  If  made  aware  of  this  simple 
mechanism,  can  act  toward  the  pupils  In  such  a  way  as 
to  train  them  away  unconsciously,  in  a  small  degree  to  be 
sure,  from  the  excesses  of  this  identification  and  prin- 
cipally by  means  of  inducing  them  to  become  as  indepen- 
dent In  their  work  as  possible.  Children  tend  to  Identify 
a  woman  teacher  with  the  mother  and  to  seek  from  her 
the  sympathy  and  help  which  they  early  received  from 
their  mothers,  and  a  teacher,  with  the  laudable  desire  of 


ii6      THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

being  loved,  will  tend,  unless  she  realizes  the  weakness 
which  she  is  perpetuating  in  her  wards,  to  over-accentuate 
the  helpfulness  which  is  so  highly  appreciated  by  the 
pupil. 

The  earliest  task  imposed  upon  the  child  in  school 
should  therefore  be  that  which  he  can  accomplish  by  his 
own  unaided  efforts.  The  identification  of  the  task  with 
the  teacher  is  almost  universal  and  is  the  initial  mistake. 
This  identification  takes  place  in  several  ways.  It  is  seen 
in  the  very  common  phenomenon  already  mentioned  that 
the  task  is  accomplished  for  the  teacher,  and  the  chief 
pleasure  and  reward  for  the  child  comes  from  the  praise 
and  affection  bestowed  by  her  on  the  pupil,  and,  more 
important  still,  the  fact  that  the  child  likes  and  does  well 
in  those  studies  where  the  teacher  is  personally  attractive 
to  the  child.  Here  the  task  is  identified  with  the  teacher 
in  the  most  concrete  form,  and  it  is  clear  that  the  elements 
in  the  child's  performance  which  should  make  for  his 
independence  are  reduced  almost  to  nothing  and  its  educa- 
tive force  almost  annihilated  in  proportion  to  the  extent 
of  the  identification.  The  first  effort  of  the  teacher  should 
therefore  be  to  change  the  attitude  of  the  child  toward  the 
task  and  encourage  his  independent  activity  toward  the 
world  of  reality,  the  only  taste  of  which  procurable  within 
the  cloister  of  the  school  is  the  feeHng  on  the  part  of  the 
child  that  he  is  mastering  a  part  of  something  which  is 
external  to  himself.  This  will  not  be  the  case  if  he  iden- 
tifies the  task  with  the  teacher. 

In  this  connection  it  is  an  unfortunate  fact  that  the 
early  tasks  of  the  school  are  generally  those  in  which  he 
is  almost  unable  to  express  any  individuality  different 
from  other  children's.    When,  for  instance,  the  same  ten 


IDENTIFICATIONS  IN  SCHOOL        117 

examples  in  arithmetic  are  given  to  a  class  of  forty  chil- 
dren, and  the  forty  sets  of  answers  have  to  be  exactly  the 
same  for  each  child,  there  is  little  scope  for  individuality. 
If  the  child  wishes  to  be  individual  and  make  his  work  his 
own  and  different  from  other  children's  he  must  have 
different  answers  to  the  examples — answers  which  are 
called  ivrong!  The  effect  is  no  less  undesirable,  even 
though  it  be  inevitable,  just  as  any  lock  step  is  undesir- 
able, though  it  be  the  only  or  the  easiest  means  of  accom- 
plishing what  seems  to  be  the  purpose  of  public  education. 
From  this  point  of  view  we  see  identification  in  another 
of  its  aspects,  the  identification  of  the  pupils  each  with 
the  other,  a  form  of  this  mechanism  which  is  seen  at 
its  highest  degree  of  development  in  a  flock  of  sheep. 

From  the  teacher's  own  point  of  view  identification  of 
the  objective  kind  is  of  the  greatest  importance,  as  it 
unconsciously  makes  him  identify  the  pupils  with  each 
other,  and  prevents  him  from  regarding  them  as  individ- 
ualities themselves.  It  is  unlikely  that  the  teacher  will 
be  able  to  correct  his  own  defective  attitude  toward  his 
pupils  if  he  is  unacquainted  with  this  mechanism  and  its 
operation  in  his  own  unconscious  thoughts  and  acts. 
Identification  is  the  easiest  method  of  mental  procedure. 
It  becomes  automatic  and  gives  the  greatest  feeling  of 
power  because  it  seems  to  enable  him  to  handle  forty  per- 
sons as  one.  In  identification  the  similarities  are  selected 
and  emphasized  and  the  differences  are  ignored,  no  matter 
what  may  be  their  real  practical  importance.  When  the 
teacher  realizes  that  identification  is  one  of  the  main 
modes  of  unconscious  thought  and  not  only  that  it  is 
operative  in  his  pupils  but  also  in  a  large  measure  in 
himself  and  in  all  other  teachers,  he  will  better  understand 


ii8    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

what  his  own  specific  problems  are  with  regard  to  the  part 
he  is  to  play  in  the  education  of  the  young. 

He  will  all  the  more  keenly  feel  the  necessity  of  an 
individual  study  of  his  pupils  and  will  be  enabled  to  make 
the  greater  allowance  for  his  own  actions  and  theirs. 
He  will  realize  that,  while  a  certain  amount  of  identifica- 
tion is  necessary  in  all  human  thinking,  in  the  formation 
of  abstract  ideas,  he  is  by  virtue  of  his  knowledge  of 
analytic  psychology  in  a  position  to  measure  the  amount 
of  identification  in  himself  and  in  other  teachers  and  adjust 
his  own  actions  accordingly.  To  what  extent  does  he 
identify  his  pupils  with  each  other?  How  much  dis- 
tinctive individuality  does  each  possess  for  him?  How 
far  does  he  allow  the  pupils  to  identify  v/ith  himself  the 
subject-matter  which  he  teaches,  and  how  intensively 
does  he  strive  to  develop  to  the  best  of  his  abiUty  the 
pupils'  independence  of  himself,  of  the  school,  of  their 
parents? 

Two  varieties  of  identification  of  the  individuality  with 
externals  are  known  as  projection  and  introjection,  pro- 
jection being  known  as  objective  and  introjection  as  sub- 
jective identification.  The  commonest  form  of  this 
mechanism  is  the  projection  of  a  reproach.  Frequently 
it  is  the  only  explanation  of  certain  forms  of  suspicion. 
All  children  and  many  adults  act  as  if  they  believed  that 
others  knew  what  was  going  on  in  their  own  minds.* 

Projection 

If  a  child  has  done  something  for  which  it  feels  guilty, 
it  will  be  very  difficult  for  it  not  to  show  some  sign  that  it 

*  Cf.  p.  124. 


PROJECTION  119 

feels  conscience-smitten,  and  it  will  itself  be  filled  with  the 
feeling  that  other  people  must  know  something  about  the 
mischief  and  blame  it  just  as  it  blames  itself.  Conscience 
therefore,  which  is  the  voice  of  their  fathers  and  mothers 
heard  in  reality  in  earlier  days,  but  now  heard  in  imag- 
ination, forces  them  to  think  that  other  people  are  blam- 
ing them,  when  it  is  really  their  own  consciences  that  are 
accusing  them.  In  such  a  case  there  is  an  identification 
between  the  personality  of  the  child  and  the  personality 
of  the  other  person.  It  is  called  an  objective  identifica- 
tion because  the  thoughts  which  originate  solely  in  the 
child's  mind  are  attributed  to  another's  mind.  Of  this 
the  child  is  unconscious,  and  the  result  is  a  self-deception 
on  the  child's  part.  If  we  should  call  the  child  the  subject 
and  the  other  person  the  object,  then  this  form  of  identi- 
fication is  called  objective  for  the  reason  that  the  mind 
state  is  attributed  by  the  subject  to  the  object. 

It  is  an  everyday  occurrence  and  regularly  unconscious 
in  the  majority  of  people.  It  is  almost  impossible  for  some 
people  to  free  themselves  from  this  form  of  irration- 
ality, but  the  less  people  are  governed  by  reason  and  the 
more  by  emotion,  the  more  difficult  it  is  to  prevent  this 
form  of  identification.  It  is  quite  true,  too,  that  a  certain 
amount  of  identification  of  the  objective  kind  is  of  great 
social  value,  as  it  is  the  basis  for  true  sympathy,  and  for 
a  great  many  of  the  finer  sentiments  of  love.  A  mother 
identifies  herself  with  her  children  and  is  pained  with 
them  and  rejoices  with  them.  The  identification  of 
mother  and  daughter  is  given  poetical  expression  in  the 
beautiful  and  familiar  passages  from  the  Book  of  Ruth. 


I20    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Introjection 

If  the  feelings  and  thoughts  of  the  subject  are  identi- 
fied by  the  subject  with  those  of  the  object,  we  call  it 
objective  identification  or  projection.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  feelings  and  thoughts  or  other  circumstances  of 
some  other  person  are  objectively  and  definitely  pictured 
and  are  identified  by  the  subject  with  the  subject's  own 
mind-states  or  other  conditions,  then  we  have  introjection 
or  subjective  identification. 

This  is  exemplified  familiarly  by  the  state  of  mind 
many  people  acquire  while  reading  books  or  articles 
about  diseases.  Having  gained  an  idea  from  the  book 
or  magazine  about  the  symptoms  of  the  disease,  they 
introject  it  into  themselves.  Projection  would  work  the 
other  way.  They  would  then,  if  they  had  some  uneasi- 
ness themselves,  instinctively  imagine  that  everyone  else 
had  the  same.  It  will  be  seen  that  introjection  is  a  sort 
of  imitation,  in  causing  an  individual  to  change  so  as  to 
be  like  a  model  which  has  been  held  up  to  him.  Thus 
biographies  and  histories  are  useful  means  for  an  advan- 
tageous employment  of  the  natural  trend  toward  sub- 
jective identification  or  introjection.  It  might  be  said 
that  this  unconscious  mechanism  is  the  basis  on  which  is 
set  all  the  academic  education  of  a  formative  or  cultural 
type,  and  is  the  major  premise  on  which  the  entire  educa- 
tional syllogism  rests.  If  we  teach  geometry,  it  is  with 
the  implication  that  the  clearness  and  accuracy  and  finality 
of  its  theorems  will  be  introjected  into  the  mind  of  the 
pupil.  When  we  give  the  pupils  literary  masterpieces  to 
read,  it  is  with  this  idea  alone,  that  the  excellences  of  the 
literature  in  form  and  matter  may  be  introjected  into  the 


INTRO  JECTION  121 

mind  of  the  pupil.  And  it  is  so  Introjected,  and  the 
effect  of  the  process  is  complete  and  total,  the  only  diffi- 
culty being  that  while  the  introjectlon  inevitably  takes 
place,  its  effects  are  not  at  once  perceptible  to  teacher  and 
parent.  An  immediate  projection  is  naively  expected  by 
educators  in  the  form  of  a  mental  expression  which  shall 
show  the  instantaneous  impress  of  the  form  of  the  lit- 
erary masterpiece.  In  the  composition  or  essay  the  state 
of  mind  of  the  pupil  should  be  projected  upon  some 
external  object,  say  the  air  or  the  paper;  and  should  show 
all  the  qualities  that  have  been  introjected  by  the  teacher 
from  the  masterpiece.  This  might  be  regarded  by  the 
most  rational  as  a  prodigious  projection  on  the  part  of 
the  educator,  and  I  have  seen  not  a  few  teachers  who 
attribute  to  the  pupil  a  great  deal  of  the  academic  mental 
viewpoint  which  teachers  themselves  have,  and  are  as 
unsettled  by  their  subsequent  recognition  of  the  discrep- 
ancy between  their  insulated  views  and  the  actual  con- 
ditions as  is  any  neurotic  by  his  occasional  actual  contact 
with  the  world  of  reality. 

We  give  the  pupil  Latin  to  learn  partly  so  that  he  may 
the  better  understand  the  structure  of  English,  which  is 
fifty  per  cent  fossilized  Latin.  We  try  to  show  him  the 
pretty  shapes  formed  by  the  fossils.  Partly,  however, 
we  beHeve  that  a  successful  introjection  can  be  effected 
through  which  the  thought-forms  of  the  ancient  Romans 
may  be  assimilated  by  the  modern  American  boy  or  girl, 
and  the  structure  of  their  cogitations  much  strengthened. 
As  we  ourselves  do  in  reading  a  book  or  a  magazine 
article  about  diseases,  we  expect  the  student  to  do,  in 
getting  the  ideas  as  they  exist  in  external  reality  and 
subjectively  identify  a  goodly  number  of  them  with  his 


122    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

own  mental  states,  and  show  us  immediately  the  effect  on 
him  so  that  we  teachers  who  are  standing  impatiently 
by,  with  tapes  and  rulers,  may  take  a  measure  of  the 
effects  we  have  produced  on  him.  When,  however,  we 
fully  realize  what  a  long-winded  and  difficult  proposition 
it  is  for  a  trained  psychologist  to  discover  and  modify 
any  of  the  mechanisms  of  the  unconscious,  we  shall  ap- 
preciate how  ridiculous  are  some  of  the  expectations  of 
the  educator. 

But  to  return  to  a  serious  consideration  of  the  dif- 
ference between  projection  and  introjection.  We  have 
seen  that  projection  is  the  attributing  of  an  external  origin 
to  that  which  was  really  only  a  mental  state.  This  does 
not  imply  always  that  the  person  so  projecting  is  in  any 
way  abnormal.  We  all  do  it,  and  do  it  daily.  Much 
that  we  see  is  only  in  our  own  minds,  and  in  general 
we  do  not  err  in  attributing  it  to  external  reality,  for 
though  it  is  not  really  there  it  is  as  good  as  there  because 
it  is  there  as  far  as  we  are  concerned.  This  is  true  of  a 
great  many  of  the  qualities  attributed  to  music,  art  and 
literature,  it  is  true  of  a  great  many  qualities  which  we 
attribute  to  persons  we  love  or  admire,  and  the  actual 
non-existence  of  the  qualities  as  an  objective  reality  is 
not  only  of  no  moment,  but  our  unconscious  self-decep- 
tion in  this  line  is  of  value  to  us  in  making  the  world 
livable.  But  it  is  only  when  the  qualities  which  we 
attribute  to  external  persons  or  things  are  disproportion- 
ately exaggerated  that  we  come  to  grief.  Then  projec- 
tion becomes  a  disease  itself  and  requires  heroic  measures 
if  it  is  to  be  cured. 

'    It  has  been  said  that  projection  Is  a  mechanism  by 
which  the  Individual  psyche  defends  itself  against  the 


INTRO  JECTION  123 

unpleasant  situations  of  life  and  originates  at  the  time 
when  the  infant  first  makes  a  distinction  between  himself 
and  the  external  world.  There  is  inaugurated  at  that 
time  a  mental  connection  between  things  that  cause  pain 
or  discomfort  and  external  objects.  Things  which  are 
unpleasant  are  in  a  sense  rejected  by  the  unconscious 
mind  of  the  child,  and  because  they  are  thus  rejected 
are  considered  as  not  a  part  of  the  self  but  a  part  of 
what  is  opposed  to  the  self — a  part,  in  other  words,  of 
the  real  externality  which  makes  bumps  and  hurts  of 
various  kinds.  Thus  when  at  a  later  date  the  individual 
is  led  by  his  unconscious  to  do  something  instinctive 
which  society  disapproves  and  he  is  mildly  or  severely 
condemned  by  society,  or  by  his  conscience  the  represen- 
tative of  society  in  his  own  soul,  he  as  instinctively  tends 
to  project  the  whole  incident  and  regard  the  act  not  as 
his  own  but  as  another's. 

It  is  even  more  so  with  thoughts.  Every  person  has 
thoughts  which  emanate  from  the  unconscious  and  are 
the  conscious  forms  of  unconscious  desires.  Those 
thoughts,  if  they  appear  in  the  form  of  criticisms  of  his 
own  conduct,  which  is  a  very  common  way  for  them  to 
appear,  are  cast,  so  to  speak,  in  the  character  of  some- 
one else — someone,  for  instance,  who  would  be  likely 
to  criticize  the  action  in  question,  or  who  the  individual 
supposes  would  be  likely  to  do  so.  If  a  person  feels  that 
someone  else  would  criticize  or  blame  him  for  doing 
some  act — such,  for  instance,  as  riding  on  a  public  con- 
veyance without  paying  fare,  or  taking  an  undue  propor- 
tion of  profit  in  the  sale  of  merchandise — it  is  ten  to  one 
that  the  criticism  is  more  subjective  than  objective.  Of 
course  any  sensitive  and  high-strung  individual  is  likely 


124    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

to  do  that,  and  it  is  only  when  the  thing  becomes  ex- 
cessive, and  interferes  with  other  activities  that  it  be- 
comes abnormal.  The  absolutely  matter-of-fact  person 
does  not  in  these  circumstances  have  the  idea  of  criticism 
or  blame  occur  to  him  in  this  connection.  The  mere 
fact  that  the  idea  occurs  is  enough  to  prove  that  it  is 
of  subjective  origin,  and  not  a  true  experience  from 
the  outside  world.,  contributed  by  someone  else.  In  the 
case  where  a  degree  of  censure  falls  upon  a  person  not 
showing  this  projection  mechanism,  such  person  reacts  in 
a  totally  different  way.  He  stoutly  denies  the  existence 
or  the  importance  of  the  act  or  its  significance,  or  if 
it  be  merely  a  thought  that  occurs  to  him,  he  dismisses 
it  as  mere  nonsense  and  is  not  troubled  by  it  further. 
But,  in  the  person  with  a  tendency  to  project  reproaches, 
the  criticism  is  falling  on  a  very  receptive  soil  and  takes 
root  and  thrives,  and  as  the  individual  is  not  acquainted 
wth  the  idea  that  many  reproaches  are  solely  of  internal 
origin,  he  thinks  that  other  people  may  be  thinking  ill 
of  him. 

Mechanism  of  Blame  * 

Perhaps  here  would  be  an  appropriate  place  to  in- 
dicate some  of  the  corollaries  deducible  from  this  prin- 
ciple with  regard  to  the  placing  of  blame,  to  the  utterance 
of  censorious  criticism,  and  to  the  question  of  punish- 
ment. Believing  that  an  error  is  but  the  miscarrying  of 
a  wish  to  create,  one  cannot  consistently  attribute  blame 
to  anyone,  man,  woman  or  child,  nor  say  that  any  act 
is  a  fault.  Entirely  aside  from  the  very  important  psy- 
chological consideration  that  the  attributing  of  blame  to 

♦This  illustrates  the  projection  of  a  reproach,  mentioned  page  ii8. 


MECHANISM  OF  BLAME  125 

anyone  is  concentrating  the  attention  on  the  destructive 
aspect  of  his  act,  magnifying  it  in  a  way  particularly 
gratifying  to  him,  and  satisfying  in  an  ill-advised  way 
his  desire  for  personal  attention,  blaming  anyone  for 
what  he  has  done  once  or  habitually  does  is  a  very  irra- 
tional procedure  for  a  teacher  who  believes  that  many 
acts  are  caused  by  unconscious  thoughts,  for  the  reason 
that  no  person  who  has  not  been  introduced  to  his  own 
unconscious  and  shown  a  method  of  controlling  it,  can  be 
held  responsible  for  what  it  makes  him  do.  This  fact 
does  not  of  course  release  a  pupil  from  real  responsi- 
bility for  his  conscious  acts  done  from  conscious  thoughts. 
It  only  places  the  responsibility  for  certain  errors  of 
performance  where  such  responsibility  really  belongs,  if 
causation  by  the  unconscious  thoughts  can  be  said  to  in- 
volve any  responsibilit}^ 

Thus  a  woman  teacher  would  not  be  likely  to  feel  any 
real  resentment  toward  an  adolescent  boy  for  any  mis- 
demeanour if  she  realized  that  his  disorder  was  really 
prompted  by  love  of  herself,  by  a  desire,  unconscious  on 
his  part,  to  be  sure,  to  have  her  attention,  to  have  her 
look  at  and  talk  to  him.  If  she  knew  enough  about  un- 
conscious mental  mechanisms  to  realize  that,  she  would 
not  blame  him,  but  would  be  able  to  use  that  unconscious 
affection  for  her  for  the  purpose  of  getting  him  to  trans- 
fer his  creative  desires  to  things  of  the  external  world 
more  appropriate  to  his  own  development  than  herself. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  she  responds  to  his  unconscious 
love-making,  and  attends  to  his  "  faults  "  and  not  to  the 
work  which  he  ought  to  be  doing,  she  is  herself  guided 
unwittingly  by  her  own  unconscious.  For  her  interest  in 
him,  even  her  irritation,  is  an  expression  of  her  own  un- 


126    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

conscious  wish  to  attract  him.  The  more  he  can  irri- 
tate her — and  his  unconscious  is  prompting  him  to  do  it 
as  intensively  as  possible,  for  his  unconscious  is  unwit- 
tingly attracted  to  her  personality — the  more  will  the 
situation  be  a  personal  one  which  approaches  real  love- 
making  as  its  limit,  and  forgets  or  ignores  the  true  pur- 
pose which  brought  them  together.  Of  course  the  child 
is  not  supposed  to  know  this,  and  the  teacher  does  not 
always  know  it  either,  though  from  the  time  when  the 
unconscious  is  recognized  as  a  factor  in  education  she  will 
know  it,  and  logically  pursue  a  true  educational  aim, 
cease  to  be  irritated  and  get  real  happiness  out  of  the 
situation. 

Separation  of  Self  from  World 

As  the  infant  begins  its  mental  life  with  an  innate 
Identification  of  itself  with  the  external  world,  the  first 
thing  it  learns  is  that  a  part  of  this  "  self,"  as  we  might 
call  the  sum  total  of  infantile  experience,  is  independent 
of  that  part  of  the  world  which  is  most  its  personal  sub- 
jective self,  and  is  not  under  its  control.  This  is  equiva- 
lent to  saying  that  a  separation  has  to  take  place  between 
the  individual  and  the  world  as  the  first  step  in  its  edu- 
cation. The  resolution  of  this  primary  identification 
continues  and  forms  one  of  the  important  aims  of  aca- 
demic education  in  the  earlier  years.  At  the  same  time 
there  is  a  secondary  separation  from  the  world,  after  the 
child  makes  the  original  separation,  and  learns  the  dif- 
ference betv/een  itself  and  external  reality.  This  sec- 
ondary separation  follows  the  finding  out  that  things  can- 
not always  be  controlled,  but  that  generally  thoughts  can, 


IDENTIFICATION  WITH  WORK        127 

and  consists  in  a  retreat  into  self,  a  flight  from  reality, 
which  unfits  the  individual  for  true  wholesome  adult  con- 
tact with  it  quite  as  much  as  would  the  maintenance  of 
the  original  infantile  identification. 

The  teacher  has  under  his  observation  less  of  the  first 
separation  from  the  world  than  has  the  parent,  for  most 
of  it  takes  place  before  the  child  comes  to  school,  though 
not  all.  But  during  the  later  grammar  grades  and  in  the 
high  school  the  secondary  separation,  or  segregation, 
tends  to  take  place  and  has  constantly  to  be  combated 
both  by  teacher  and  parent,  so  that  the  final  aim  is  in 
a  sense  the  reverse  of  the  initial  aim  of  education, 
namely,  to  unite  the  individual  with  the  world  from  which 
under  certain  circumstances  he  tends  more  and  more  to 
separate  himself.  Complete  education,  therefore,  re- 
garded solely  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual's 
relation  to  the  world  of  external  reality,  forms  a  cycle  in 
which  the  individual  is  first  separated  from  the  world 
and  then  united  with  it,  and  in  a  sense  separated  from 
himself.  This  is  accomplished  by  giving  the  thoughts 
and  acts  as  external  a  reference  as  possible. 

Identification  with  Work 

This  externalization  of  the  thoughts  and  acts  may 
take  place  In  every  hour  of  every  school  day,  or,  from 
some  technical  error  in  school  management,  it  may  fail 
to  take  place.  The  pupil  should  be  taught  so  to  throw 
himself  into  the  work  as,  in  a  certain  sense,  to  identify 
himself  with  it.  He  should  be  taught  that  a  complete 
absorption  In  work,  while  he  is  at  work,  will  enable  him 
to  be  completely  absorbed  in  play,  when  playtime  comes 


128    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

around.  Lest  It  be  inferred  that  I  am  here  favouring  a 
strenuosity  of  life  which  ill  accords  with  the  nervous 
natures  of  some  pupils,  I  say  that  there  should  be  some, 
if  even  a  very  little,  time  devoted  to  day-dreaming,  pro- 
vided the  pupil  knows  what  he  is  doing  and  how  dif- 
ferent in  character  it  is  from  true  thinking  directed 
toward  a  definite  goal.  And  it  should  not  be  inferred 
either  that  a  programme  can  be  made  out,  with  a  time- 
table, showing  just  so  much  directed  thinking,  so  much 
play  and  so  much  day-dreaming,  at  times  which  are  at 
the  same  hour  and  of  the  same  length  for  all  pupils  of 
the  same  grade.  For  the  programme  and  the  time-table 
are  as  impossible,  in  the  highest  development  of  per- 
sonality, as  are  the  uniform  size  and  positions  of  school 
furniture. 

In  order  to  develop  the  individual  to  his  highest  de- 
gree of  personality,  it  will  eventually  have  to  come  to 
individual  methods  in  education.  The  teacher  will  have 
to  know  human  nature  so  thoroughly,  a  knowledge 
which  can  be  acquired  only  through  a  knowledge  of  the 
unconscious  as  well  as  of  conscious  life,  that  if  he  has 
more  than  one  pupil  he  may  be  able  to  get  at  the  root 
of  any  difficulties  they  may  have  in  a  time  much  shorter 
than  he  devotes  to  a  whole  class  at  the  present  time. 
His  words  will  have  to  be  few  but  telling.  A  class  of 
twenty-five  with  recitations  of  forty^ve  minutes  each 
week  for  twenty  weeks  a  term  would  give  each  child  a 
whole  week  a  term  of  individual  instruction.  How 
much  could  be  told  each  child  in  that  time,  even  by  the 
most  skilful  teacher,  provided  that  instruction  were  the 
aim  and  not  education?  How  much  could  a  child  learn 
from  a  teacher  in  225  minutes  a  term?     Certainly  to 


INDIVIDUAL  ATTENTION  TO  PUPIL     129 

improve  the  quality  of  the  work  the  teacher  does  for 
the  child,  a  great  improvement  is  necessary  in  the  ski^l 
of  the  teacher.  And  of  course  the  average  child  does 
not  get  225  minutes  a  term,  450  minutes  a  year,  from 
the  teacher,  because  the  classes  are  larger  and  the  weeks 
are  fewer  in  most  schools. 

But  if  it  could  be  proved  that  all  the  good  the  child 
gets  from  the  teacher  is  received  only  in  the  times  of 
personal,  individual  contact  which  he  does  get,  say  about 
three  minutes  a  day,  it  would  seem  quite  worth  while  to 
change  things  so  that  he  could  get  more.  That  is,  pro- 
vided the  teacher  was  so  constituted  as  to  be  worth  it. 
If  as  taxpayers  we  could  see  that  more  individual  at- 
tention of  teacher  to  pupil  was  fully  worth  all  that  was 
expended  for  it,  it  would  be  cheap  at  any  price,  which 
proves  that  as  taxpayers  we  do  not  believe  it.  In  other 
words,  we  believe  that  what  the  child  gets  in  school  he 
gets  more  from  the  building  and  from  the  other  children 
and  from  his  own  efforts  than  he  does  from  the  teacher. 
But  what  a  very  unbusinesslike  proposition  that  is!  As 
well  say  that  physicians  could  cure  their  patients  in 
classes  of  thirty  in  a  magnificent  hospital  building  by 
hearing  them  recite  their  symptoms  and  telling  them 
what  to  do  and  not  to  do. 

Individual  Attention  to  Pupil 

And  all  the  more  is  it  necessary  to  give  the  children 
a  greater  amount  of  special  attention  and  pay  the 
teachers  more  liberally  to  enable  them  to  give  it,  when 
it  is  realized  that  the  problem  in  teaching  is  not  alone  the 
subject-matter  of  instruction  and  not  alone  the  conscious 


I30    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

thought  of  the  child  about  the  subject,  but,  more  neces- 
sary than  all  that,  is  the  teacher's  knowledge  of  the  uncon- 
scious thoughts  his  own  and  the  pupil's.  This  is  an 
entirely  new  science  which  the  teacher  of  the  near  future 
will  have  to  have,  and  be  more  proficient  in,  than  in  the 
"  subject "  which  he  is  supposed  to  know.  Teachers 
are  now  examined  in  the  theory  of  education,  and  to  a 
certain  extent  in  psychology,  before  they  are  granted 
licenses  to  teach.  But  the  newer  psychology,  as  applied 
to  education,  is  something  that  soon  will  be  demanded  of 
every  competent  teacher. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  a  few  "born  teachers" 
have  instinctively  grasped  the  main  principles  of  the 
newer  psychology,  and  their  work  in  the  classroom  is  as 
good  as  a  knowledge  of  the  newer  psychology  could 
make  it,  but  they  are  very  few  indeed.  The  state  should 
take  it  upon  itself  to  see  that  the  work  of  all  teachers 
is  as  good  as  that  of  the  "  born  teacher."  This  can- 
not be  done  without  a  knowledge  of  the  working  of  the 
unconscious  part  of  the  mind. 

Compensation 

Any  paired  organ  of  the  body  naturally  extends  its 
activities  or  sharpens  its  abilities  if  the  other  of  the 
pair  is  damaged  or  destroyed.  Thus,  one  eye  being 
injured,  the  other  frequently  takes  an  added  respon- 
sibility and  does  the  work  for  two.  One  may  even 
regard  the  different  senses  as  paired  in  this  connection. 
A  person  becoming  blind  gains  greater  acuity  of  hearing 
or  greater  sensitiveness  of  touch. 

This  is  exactly  what  takes  place  in  those   faculties 


COMPENSATION  131 

which  we  call  mental  but  which,  being  based  on  the 
physical  properties  of  matter,  ought  rather  to  be  called 
material-mental  or  psycho-physical.  Automatic  adjust- 
ments take  place  all  over  the  body  all  the  time,  appar- 
ently designed  by  nature  to  adapt  the  organism  to  the 
changing  circumstances  of  its  environment.  Thus  the 
approach  of  danger  sensed  by  the  unconscious  produces 
many  changes  in  the  body  of  which  consciousness  is  not 
aware.  It  sends  an  increased  amount  of  sugar  to  the 
muscles,  a  substance  which  they  consume  in  greater 
amount  in  more  strenuous  physical  exertion.  It  aerates 
the  blood  by  producing  a  more  rapid  respiration,  and  to 
the  blood  it  furnishes  also  a  principle  which  makes  it 
much  more  likely  to  clot  in  case  of  a  wound. 

Analogous  to  these  physical  preparations  which  go  on 
in  the  body  below  the  level  of  consciousness,  there  are 
many  mental  processes  which  take  place  below  the  thresh- 
old of  consciousness.  This  is  not  to  say  that  these 
mental  processes  take  place  as  preliminaries  to  an 
emotion  after  which  the  emotion  ensues,  but  it  is  nearer 
the  truth  to  say  that  these  processes  are  the  emotion, 
and  that  part  of  the  emotion  of  which  we  are  conscious 
is  but  the  effect  of  these  unconscious  mental  processes 
upon  the  consciousness  itself. 

What  then,  it  may  be  asked.  Is  the  advantage  gained 
by  calling  these  processes  mental,  and  In  what  way  are 
they  to  be  distinguished  from  physical  processes?  In 
answer  it  may  be  said  that  the  distinction  between  mental 
and  physical  processes  is  a  philosophical  problem  which 
is  irrelevant  to  a  chapter  on  psychology  and  still  more 
so  in  a  book  on  the  application  to  educational  prob- 
lems of  the  hypotheses  of  a  new  type  of  psychology. 


132    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

A  word  should  be  said  here  about  the  deterministic 
implications  which  will  by  some  people  be  attributed  to 
this  mode  of  thinking.  If  our  thoughts,  as  seems  to  be 
implied,  are  the  effects  of  processes  (whether  mental 
or  physical)  which  take  place  apart  from  consciousness 
and  according  to  the  laws  of  the  physical  world  as  studied 
by  natural  science,  what  hope  is  there  that  the  individual 
is  now,  or  ever  will  be,  able  to  have  a  will  free  enough 
to  control  not  physical  matter,  but  even  the  coming  and 
going  and  selection  of  his  own  thoughts?  This  is  a 
topic  which  has  been  discussed  for  ages  and  belongs 
rather  in  a  metaphysical  treatise  than  in  a  psychological 
one.  In  this  book  I  am  attempting  only  an  exposition  of 
the  principles  of  the  newer  psychology,  an  exposition 
which  I  hope  will  put  some  of  our  educational  problems 
in  a  new  light  for  other  teachers  as  it  has  done 
for  me. 

The  physiological  processes  go  on  all  the  time  in 
the  body  without  coming  into  consciousness  and  being 
recognized  for  what  they  are.  Undoubtedly  they  do 
produce  a  remote  effect  upon  conscious  mental  states. 
We  are  all  familiar  with  them.  The  presence  in  the 
stomach  of  ill-chewed,  rapidly  swallowed,  inadequately 
salivated  food  causes  at  times  a  form  of  indigestion  to 
which  is  attributed  as  an  effect  an  emotional  state  appro- 
priately called  sourness  of  temper.  Yet  we  do  not  call 
the  sourness  of  temper  or  any  of  the  feelings  or  acts 
which  it  evokes  and  which  are  admittedly  consciously 
perceived — we  do  not  call  these  the  perception  of  the 
indigestion.  What  is  it  that  is  felt?  As  well  ask  what 
is  it  that  is  seen  when  we  look  at  a  plum  pudding.  Do 
we  see  a  white  dish,  with  a  brown  and  black  mass  on 


COMPENSATION  133 

it,  over  which  hovers  a  pale  blue  vapour?  Strictly  speak- 
ing, we  do  not  perceive  any  of  those  things  until  after 
we  have  learned  what  they  are. 

Nor  do  we  perceive  either  the  unconscious  or  any 
of  its  effects  as  such  until  we  learn  what  it  is  and  what 
they  are.  The  method  of  discovery  and  the  nature  of 
the  inference  by  which  the  existence  and  qualities  of  the 
unconscious  are  deduced  or  inductively  inferred  is  a 
matter  of  the  deepest  interest,  but  can  only  be  touched 
upon  here.  It  is  somewhat  similar  to  the  mental  pro- 
cesses by  which  the  planet  Neptune  was  first  supposed 
by  astronomers  to  exist,  though  invisible,  and  later 
seen  in  the  calculated  position  when  the  telescopes  of 
higher  power  were  made. 

From  the  aberrant  behaviour  of  certain  planets  the 
attraction  of  a  larger,  remoter  invisible  body  was 
inferred.  From  mental  aberrations  of  our  conscious 
states  has  been  deduced  the  existence  of  the  larger,  and 
in  a  sense  remoter,  imperceptible  psychic  entity  in  the 
personality  of  each  and  every  one  of  us.  That  is,  the 
thoughts  and  actions  are  called  aberrant,  just  as  the  mo- 
tions of  the  planets  were,  until  the  presence  of  the 
larger  body  was  known.  Then  they  were  recognized 
(cognized  again)  as  not  in  the  least  aberrant.  They 
did  not  depart  from  the  laws  of  motion.  Therefore 
what  astronomers  did  when  they  found  that  the  so-called 
irregularities  of  the  planets'  motions  were  not  irregu- 
larities at  all,  except  from  a  narrow  point  of  view,  was 
exactly  what  psychologists  are  now  doing  when  they  dis- 
cover that  what  have  been  called  mental  aberrations 
are  not  departures  from  natural  law,  but  are  illustra- 
tions of  it.     They  were  the  working  of  a  cause  which 


134    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

had  not  yet  been  discovered  or  traced  to  its  ultimate 
principle.  For  instance,  many  of  the  acts  of  insane 
persons  have  been  attributed  by  the  newer  psychology 
to  the  fact  that  the  insane  are  in  a  great  many  senses 
merely  children  of  a  larger  growth  and  their  actions 
are  determined  by  a  persisting  infantility. 

The  purpose  of  this  long  disquisition  on  these  aspects 
of  the  theory  of  the  unconscious  is  to  lay  the  founda- 
tion for  an  understanding  and  insight  into  the  mech- 
anisms of  thought  as  they  have  been  revealed  by  the 
more  modern  type  of  psychological  research. 

We  have  seen  so  far  that  ambivalence  is  that  mental 
attribute  which  corresponds  to  the  antagonism  of 
forces  in  the  purely  physical  realm,  and  is  seen  in  the 
psychic  sphere  in  such  traits  of  general  nature  as  the 
existence  of  love  and  hate  in  the  same  person  for  the  per- 
son, at  the  same  time,  being  thus  an  attribute  of  the 
emotional  life.  And  we  have  just  begun  to  discuss  the 
attribute  of  compensation  which  we  saw  clearly  exempli- 
fied In  the  physiological  sphere  In  several  types  of  action. 

A  compensation  is  a  conscious  effect  of  an  unconscious 
cause.  Why  not,  then,  call  It  merely  an  effect  and  not 
put  another  name  to  It?  For  the  reason  that  in  the 
concept  of  compensation  the  effect  Is  regarded  as 
analogous  to  Its  cause  and  not  of  an  entirely  different 
classification.  This  analogy  Includes  direct  contraries. 
As  is  seen  In  the  section  on  ambivalence  (page  93),  a 
strong  desire  for  a  certain  person  expressed  In  love  will 
be  turned  Instantly  into  hate,  both  of  which  enter  con- 
sciousness, sometimes  to  the  utter  surprise  of  the  per- 
son concerned.  An  old  proverb  says  that  a  woman  who 
hates  a  man  either  has  loved,  does  love  or  will  love 


COMPENSATION  135^ 

him.  In  a  compensation,  however,  only  one  member  of 
the  analogy  enters  consciousness,  while  ambivalence 
keeps  both  members  of  the  equation,  both  sides  of  the 
balance,  so  to  speak,  below  the  threshold  of  conscious- 
ness. It  is  only  in  the  mechanism  of  compensation  that 
one  of  the  pair  of  activities  appears  in  consciousness.  A 
person  will  compensate  with  conscious  actions  for  an 
unconscious  desire,  just  as  he  will  balance  two  con- 
scious desires  and  throw  more  impetus  into  the  one 
because  it  is  a  socially  approved  one,  for  the  reason  that 
he  has  already  thrown  more  than  he  thinks  he  ought 
into  the  other,  and  he  wishes  to  keep  a  certain  balance 
between  what  he  instinctively  wants  to  do  and  what, 
from  his  experience  of  society,  he  thinks  it  wants  him 
to  do.  By  keeping  an  even  balance  in  this  way  he 
satisfies  his  conscience  and  does  not  worry. 

A  corollary  of  this  compensating  for  an  unconscious 
desire  by  means  of  a  conscious  one  is  that  we  have  no 
conscious  desires  that  are  not  compensations.  It  is  quite 
evident  that  as  the  unconscious  desires  are  the  pressure 
of  the  animal  instincts,  against  which  society  has  set  up 
numerous  barriers,  we  should,  if  we  followed  these  all 
the  time,  do  practically  nothing  of  all  the  complicated 
web  of  human  activities  which  now  we  are  weaving.  If 
no  barriers  of  society  whatever  opposed  us,  we  should 
have  no  compensatory  mechanisms  such  as  we  now  have. 
There  would  be  no  restraint  or  repression.  But  the 
moment  we  have  any  restraint  opposed  against  us,  we 
attempt  to  fulfil  our  desires  in  some  other  way,  pro- 
vided we  cannot  overcome  the  restraint.  If  a  runaway, 
or  a  river,  comes  to  a  wall  or  a  dam,  he  goes  over  it  or 
around  it  if  he  cannot  knock  it  down.    The  going  around 


136    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

it  is  the  compensation  for  the  going  over,  which  he  (or 
it)  cannot  do. 

Substitution 

Thus  through  compensation,  which  means  quite  as 
much  libido  directed  against  another  object  when  it  is 
obstructed  by  one  object,  we  necessarily  make  use  of 
substitutes.  In  other  words,  a  strong  desire  is  for  some 
definite  thing,  unless  it  is  for  promiscuous  muscular 
activity,  and  then  kicking  or  running  or  swimming  will 
satisfy.  But  it  is  a  familiar  human  experience  that  when 
we  want  any  specific  thing  it  is  possible  to  transfer  that 
desire  to  some  other  thing.  In  this  case  we  do  not  so 
much  compensate  as  substitute.  Generally  a  compen- 
satory mechanism  is  a  reaction  in  consciousness  to  an 
unconscious  stimulus,  while  a  substitution  is  the  replace- 
ment of  one  thought  or  act  in  consciousness  by  another 
thought  or  act  in  consciousness.  Furthermore  the  term 
compensation  is  more  extensive;  that  is,  a  long  and 
complicated  course  of  action  may  be  called  a  compensa- 
tion mechanism,  while  a  single  idea  or  mannerism  of 
action — in  other  words,  a  small  unit  of  activity — is  likely 
to  be  called  a  substitute  formation. 

Both  compensations  and  substitutions  are  mediated 
through  mere  displacements  of  ideas.  One  idea  dis- 
places another  in  the  mind  and  one  idea  is  substituted 
for  another  idea  as  the  goal-idea  of  a  desire.  This  is 
not  the  same  as  saying  that  one  idea  follows  another 
in  the  mind,  each  idea  giving  way  before,  and  in  that 
sense  being  displaced  by,  its  successor.  That  would  be 
a  purely  descriptive  statement  of  what  actually  takes 
place  in  the  mind  because  our  stream  of  consciousness 


SUBSTITUTION  137 

Is  never  other  than  one  idea  following  another.  But 
a  displacement  or  a  substitution  is  an  idea  which  takes 
the  place  of  another  idea  in  the  mind  at  all  times  when 
that  second  idea,  which  we  might  call  the  original  idea, 
would  naturally  (that  is,  if  there  were  no  repressions) 
appear  in  the  mind.  The  original  idea  is  a  banished 
idea,  not  allowed  to  enter  consciousness,  and,  as  if  it 
had  a  desire  of  its  own  to  enter  consciousness  which  it 
could  satisfy  vicariously,  it  sends  its  representative  or 
proxy  to  act  for  it.  Thus  in  displacement  is  implied  an 
inability  of  the  idea  which  is  displaced  to  enter  con- 
sciousness, together  with  its  being  unknown  for  what 
it  really  is  and  frequently  there  is  implied  a  power  of 
the  displaced,  covered,  shrouded,  masked  idea  to  work, 
in  the  unconscious,  physical  ill  on  the  individual  for 
whom  it  is  a  masked  idea,  due  no  doubt  to  the  indi- 
vidual's consequent  inability  to  adjust  it  to  the  remainder 
of  his  personality,  which  as  he  cannot  see  it,  he  is  unable 
to  do. 

While  one  idea  may  be  substituted  for  another  as  the 
goal  idea  of  a  desire,  the  desire  remains  the  same,  not 
in  content  but  in  strength.  Heine  said  that  the  French 
put  as  much  energy  into  their  pursuit  of  liberty  as  ardour 
into  the  affection  for  their  chosen  brides,  while  the  Ger- 
mans look  upon  liberty  as  they  do  upon  their  aged 
grandmothers.  A  man  may  devote  his  entire  energy, 
which  means  his  entire  libido,  to  an  abstract  cause,  or  he 
may  consume  it  in  the  love  of  a  fair  mistress.  He  may 
also,  if  the  fair  lady  has  rejected  him,  and  he  finds  no 
physical  outlet  for  his  excited  emotions,  spend  them 
upon  himself. 


138    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Displacement 

In  Identification  and  compensation  we  have  seen  a  con- 
scious thought  displacing,  or  substituted  for,  an  uncon- 
scious desire.  Displacement  is  the  generic  term  describ- 
ing these  substitutions  of  conscious  thought  and  action 
for  the  natural  instinctive  unconscious  thoughts  which, 
though  continuously  pushing  forward  toward  conscious- 
ness, are  transformed  in  such  a  way  that  they  are 
acceptable  to  the  social  conventions  of  conscious  life. 
The  thought  and  action  of  which  we  are  conscious  in  our- 
selves and  in  others  is  invariably  a  displacement,  a  dis- 
guise under  which  the  unconscious  wish  passes  the  censor 
and  enters  consciousness,  a  disguise  without  which  it 
would  be  opposed.  Only  those  thoughts  and  actions 
which  are  vigorously  opposed  as  immoral  when  they 
enter  consciousness,  as  they  do  occasionally  as  crime, 
heresy,  etc.,  are  the  natural  and  undisguised  unconscious 
wishes. 

The  classroom  actions  of  the  pupil  are  disguised  or 
substituted  actions  in  almost  every  case.  And  we  are 
constantly  requiring  the  pupil  to  make  substitutions  in 
his  own  action  for  the  actions  which  his  unconscious 
wishes  would  cause  him  to  perform.  In  a  sense  that  is 
what  school  and  education  are  for.  But  we  reason  that 
a  superimposed  substitution  will  have  the  same  good 
result  as  a  naturally  developed  one.    Here  Is  an  instance : 

It  is  quite  true  that  a  middle-aged  man  may  sit  gladly 
for  hours  (but  not  every  man,  at  that)  with  a  pen  in  his 
hand  writing  in  a  book,  and  an  almost  infinitesimal  pro- 
portion of  men  will  write  books  which  will  have  an 
influence  on  the  acts  of  their  fellow-men.     But  to  think 


DISPLACEMENT  139 

that  the  influential  words  are  caused  by  the  sitting  still 
is  an  evident  fallacy,  and  yet  that  is  exactly  what  we 
are  doing  in  schools  everywhere.  The  position  in  which 
we  put  the  pupil  is  analogous  to  that  of  the  middle-aged 
writer,  before  a  desk  and  holding  a  pen,  and  the  reason- 
ing is  exactly  that  of  the  savage  who  makes  an  image 
of  his  conception  of  a  god  and  puts  food  before  it. 
The  savage  thinks:  This  image  will  eat  this  food  and 
be  pleased  with  me  and  grant  me  a  favour,  exactly  as 
I  was  pleased  and  did  a  favour  for  someone  who  set 
food  before  me. 

We  seem  to  have  reasoned  the  same  way.  Just  as 
good  may  come  from  a  mature  man  sitting  at  a  desk,  so 
will  good  come  from  the  immature  man  sitting  at  a  desk. 
And  this  is  a  mental  displacement  (identification)  just 
as  erroneous,  but  just  as  dynamic  psychologically  because 
it  has  produced  the  present  classroom  requirements,  as 
is  the  identification  which  the  pupil  makes  of  the  teacher 
with  the  stern  father  or  mother,  or  which  the  teacher 
makes  of  the  pupil  in  identifying  him  with  a  previously 
experienced  disorderly  one.  Similarly  when  a  nervous 
woman  comes  to  a  physician  for  treatment  and  one  of 
the  symptoms  is  an  exaggerated  solicitude  for  her  mother 
or  her  children  we  have  another  displacement.  Like 
all  unconscious  displacements  it  is  the  substitution  of  one 
idea  for  another.  In  the  case  of  the  nervous  woman  she 
replaced  desire  which  was  in  her  unconscious  with  its 
opposite,  anxiety,  in  her  conscious  life,  and  by  the 
strength  of  her  solicitude  she  expressed  the  real  depth 
of  her  unconscious  desire  that  her  mother  should  die. 
By  the  sternness  with  which  we  repress  the  movements 
of  the  child  do  we  similarly  express  the  depth  of  our 


I40    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

unconscious  desire  to  let  him  give  full  play  to  his  instincts 
and  develop  them  in  a  rational  manner.  The  exag- 
gerated concern  of  a  daughter  for  her  mother's  health 
or  of  a  mother  for  that  of  her  children  has  frequently 
been  found  to  be  a  conscious  over-compensation  for  the 
opposite  wish  in  the  unconscious.  I  think  our  present 
insistence  upon  uniformity  and  silence  and  motionless- 
ness  on  the  part  of  the  school  child  is  similarly  an  over- 
compensation for  our  real  unconscious  feeling  that  they 
need  to  move  more  than  they  do.  And  of  course  the 
thing  works  out  in  the  opposite  direction.  The  child 
over-compensates  for  his  unconscious  desire  to  neglect 
lessons  by  an  occasional  over-vigorous  spurt  of  accom- 
plishment. 

It  may  be  said  that  a  noticeably  strong  conscious  tend- 
ency in  any  direction  is  likely  to  indicate  the  presence 
of  an  opposite  tendency  in  the  unconscious,  much  as  a 
convexity  on  one  side  of  a  thin  metal  plate  corresponds 
to  a  concavity  on  the  other  side.  And  in  each  case  it 
is  really  the  same  force  which  produces  the  unevenness. 
Any  unevenness  in  character,  or  idiosyncrasy  or  eccen- 
tricity is  thus  seen  to  be  the  work  of  unconscious  forces, 
the  conscious  form  in  which  they  are  displayed  almost 
invariably  being  a  displacement  of  some  sort. 

Here  we  have  reasoning  by  analogy  carried  out  in  a 
psychological  and  not  a  logical  manner,  and  commit  all 
the  blunders  which  can  be  committed  in  so  doing.  Dis- 
placement is  technically  defined  as  the  using  of  the 
wrong  ideas  with  the  wrong  emotions,  or  vice  versa,  the 
psychical  putting  of  things  in  the  wrong  place.  When 
the  displacement  reaches  an  extreme,  as  it  does  in  cases 
which   psychiatry   calls    anxiety  hysteria,    the    emotions 


DISPLACEMENT  141 

which  properly  belong  to  certain  ideas  are  taken  away 
from  those  ideas  entirely.  The  ideas  are  themselves 
repressed  into  the  unconscious,  but  the  emotions,  which 
cannot  be  repressed,  are  attached  to  other  ideas  which 
in  normal  persons  are  not  associated  with  such  strong 
emotions. 

If,  for  instance,  a  person  is  excessively  afraid  of 
snakes  or  of  thunderstorms  or  of  tunnels  or  of  dogs  or 
what  not,  and  has  a  fear  of  them  which  other  persons 
ridicule  and  which  neither  they  nor  the  timorous  person 
can  account  for,  then  they  exemplify  this  displacement 
between  idea  and  emotion.  Similarly  any  complete 
inability  on  the  part  of  any  pupil  to  master  a  given  task 
may  be  caused  by  a  similar  displacement.  The  emotions 
which  are  engendered  by  the  task  are  quite  dispropor- 
tionate to  it.  Therefore  they  belong  not-"  to  it  but  to 
some  other  idea  which,  if  the  teacher  knows  enough, 
may  be  discovered  and  the  excessive  emotion  may  be 
disengaged  from  the  task  in  question. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  should  be  no  emotion, 
no  excitement,  no  liveliness  in  the  schoolroom.  All  of 
these  are  necessary,  both  on  the  part  of  the  pupil  and 
of  the  teacher.  In  the  pupils  the  emotions  are  properly 
expressed  in  activity  which  necessarily  results  in  noise 
in  the  undraped  room.  I  refer  only  to  the  type  of 
emotion  which  is  appropriate  and  which  is  seen  in  all 
schoolrooms  where  real  honest  effort  is  being  made. 
There  is  no  objection  to  frequent  bursts  of  laughter,  if 
they  are  the  result  of  the  pupils'  perception  of  relations 
of  the  subject-matter,  and  not  mere  deriding  the  unsuc- 
cessful efforts  of  some  supposedly  stupid  pupil.  Of 
course  it  is  unfortunate  that  we  have  not  yet  arrived  at 


142    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

the  state  of  civilization  where  the  physical  activities  can 
be  more  gradually  tapered  off  and  the  sublimation  of 
physical  Into  mental  energy  is  not  authoritatively 
demanded  at  once. 

I  know  a  high  school,  for  instance,  where  the  first 
experience  of  the  incoming  student  is  being  required  to 
sit  for  two  hours  and  a  half  in  the  assembly  hall,  where 
absolute  silence  and  motionlessness  is  sternly  demanded, 
and  the  unfortunate  child  who  forgets  and  talks  to  his 
neighbour  is  required  to  take  a  seat  on  the  platform  and 
be  eyed  by  a  thousand  children  as  an  example.  I  know 
of  no  house  of  public  entertainment  where  people  gladly 
pay  money  for  a  seat,  in  which  the  performance  of  two 
and  a  half  hours  is  not  broken  three  or  four  times  and 
the  audience  is  given  an  opportunity  to  relax.  But  in 
our  present  school  system,  so  powerfully  are  we  domi- 
nated by  the  silence  of  the  printed  page  that  we  act  as 
if  we  supposed  that  directed  thinking  could  be  immedi- 
ately produced  by  suppression  of  the  physical  expression 
of  the  undirected  variety,  all  the  motions  of  most  chil- 
dren belonging  In  this  class. 

In  adult  human  life  many  of  the  most  Intensely 
interested  persons  are  Intense  in  certain  directions  by 
virtue  of  a  displacement  of  over-compensation.  Anti- 
vivisectionlsts  frequently  by  their  activity  show  an  over- 
compensation for  unconscious  desire  to  inflict  cruelty, 
the  significant  fact  being  that  whether  they  were  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  cruel,  they  would  be  equally 
concerned  psychically  with  the  idea  of  cruelty,  an  idea 
which,  to  the  ordinary  person,  has  been  outgrown  with 
the  other  infantile  attributes.  Militant  feminists,  when 
women,  are  frequently  giving  expression  by  their  exces- 


DISPLACEMENT  143 

sive  militancy  to  an  unconscious  wish  not  to  rule  and  be 
the  equals  of  men  but  to  be  ruled  and  dominated  by 
a  man.  Lynching  is  another  expression  in  consciousness 
of  an  unconscious  desire  for  cruelty.  Few  members  of 
a  lynching  party,  if  interrogated,  would  admit  that  they 
took  pleasure  in  the  sufferings  of  the  lynched  person. 
They  rationalize  their  actions  as  being  of  social  value, 
saying  that  they  wish  to  deter  others,  to  hasten  the  slow 
steps  of  justice,  etc. 

It  will  therefore  be  of  the  most  vital  importance  for 
teachers  in  the  schools  of  the  future  to  have  a  means  of 
interpreting  any  peculiarities  of  behaviour  on  the  part 
of  the  pupil,  to  the  end  that  they  may  take  measures 
to  prevent  the  further  development  of  that  trend  of  the 
unconscious  which  is  indicated  by  the  observed  peculiar- 
ity. As  sadism,  or  the  unconscious  desire  to  inflict 
cruelty,  is  a  perfectly  natural  and  necessary  element 
in  the  constitution  of  the  child,  but  in  normal  develop- 
ment is  outgrown,  any  person  giving  evidence  by  his 
conscious  words  or  acts  of  such  an  unconscious  desire 
is  but  manifesting  the  fact  that,  in  this  respect,  his 
development  has  been  arrested. 

Accordingly  it  is  extremely  important,  if  education  Is 
to  do  the  best  for  the  pupil,  for  some  steps  to  be  taken 
to  remove  this  unconscious  desire  or  to  develop  it  into 
one  of  the  numerous  forms  which  sublimated  sadism 
takes,  such  as  mastery,  leadership,  interest  in  medicine, 
surgery,  etc.  In  his  professional  practice,  many  a 
surgeon  has  given  a  sublimation  to  the  sadistic  trend 
which  otherwise  would  have  led  him  to  take  pleasure  in 
inflicting  pain  on  other  persons  and  thereby  has  attained 
a  socially  valuable  gratification  of  the  unconscious  wish. 


144    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

The  teachers  of  the  future  will  be  able  to  observe  and 
control  for  the  advantage  of  society  this  and  other  trends 
which  give  evidence  of  an  irregularity  in  development. 

Thus  we  see  one  of  the  apparent  inconsistencies  of 
humans  clearly  accounted  for.  The  person  with  an 
intense,  because  not  seasonably  outgrown  desire,  which 
is  yet  unconscious,  to  inflict  cruelty  on  man  or  animals, 
gets  a  reputation  for  an  equally  intense  aversion  to 
cruelty,  to  which,  up  to  the  present  time,  society  has 
given  its  approval.  It  is  quite  evident  here  that  conscious- 
ness and  the  unconscious  are  working  together,  but  in  an 
inconsistent  manner.  The  unconscious  desires  cruelty, 
but  is  satisfied  with  the  contemplation  of  cruelty  and  the 
effects  of  cruelty  in  and  on  other  persons.  It  is  quite 
evident,  also,  where  the  displacement  comes  in,  and  that 
it  is  the  displacement  which  enables  the  conscious  and 
the  unconscious  mental  activities  to  get  on  the  same 
track.  Cruelty  is  what  the  mind  is  craving.  In  the  case 
of  the  openly  cruel  man  who  becomes  a  criminal  there 
occurs  too,  and  without  displacement,  a  uniting  of  con- 
sciousness and  the  unconscious  in  one  direction,  thus 
avoiding  a  conflict,  but  it  is  a  direction  inimical  to  society 
and  society  checks  it  in  what  manner  it  can — at  present  by 
jailing  or  killing  the  cruel  one.  In  the  case  of  the  per- 
son who  is  unconsciously  craving  to  inflict  cruelty,  there 
is  a  displacement.  The  mind  feasts  on  cruelty,  but, 
in  order  to  gain  the  approval  of  consciousness,  and  of 
society,  so  that  it  can  go  ahead  full  speed,  it  displaces 
the  infliction  of  cruelty  from  self  to  some  other  person. 
In  the  case  of  some  surgeons  the  displacement  is  of 
another  character,  for  instead  of  the  unconscious  satis- 
faction being  derived  from  the  cruelty  itself,  the  satis- 


DISPLACEMENT  145 

faction  Is  displaced  (though  not  misplaced)  to  a 
satisfaction  derived  from  the  good  results  of  the  actions 
which  cause  pain. 

This  is  the  displacement  of  the  teacher  Inflicting  cor- 
poral punishment.  The  fancied  good  result  of  it  replaces 
In  his  consciousness  the  unconscious  gratification  of  his 
unconscious  desire  to  inflict  pain.  Because  there  is 
supposed  to  be  a  good  result,  the  goodness  covers  in  his 
mind  the  badness  of  the  cruelty  and  contributes  to  the 
severity  of  the  punishment.  This  applies  of  course  to 
all  sorts  of  punishment,  and  indeed  is  the  fundamental 
objection  against  punishment  of  any  kind,  whether  in 
school  or  out.  The  justice  of  the  retribution  covers  the 
desire  to  inflict  pain  and  reinforces  It,  and  the  mind  con- 
tinues to  be  directed  toward  the  offence,  which  in  many 
ways  would  better  be  Ignored  entirely. 

Like  the  significance  of  the  occurrence  of  ideas  (page 
197),  the  significance  of  the  mind's  being  unduly  occupied 
with  certain  ideas  or  feelings  is  very  great.  In  the 
sadistic  persons  above  mentioned  the  idea  of  cruelty  or 
Inflicting  pain  or  punishment  has  seized  and  has,  tem- 
porarily at  any  rate,  full  possession  of  the  minds  of  the 
Individuals  In  question.  The  very  fact  that  a  misde- 
meanour has  been  observed  by  a  teacher  Is  sometimes  a 
proof  that  the  teacher  has  been  unconsciously  on  the 
lookout  for  a  chance  to  express  his  unconscious  sadism; 
and  the  entire  episode  of  detecting,  and  of  recording 
and  of  administering  punishment  (beautiful  phrase!)  Is 
an  instance  of  a  mild  obsession  of  an  idea.  The  Ideas 
that  should  be  exchanged  by  teacher  and  pupil  are 
English,  arithmetic,  etc.,  and  progress — social  service. 
None  of  these  enters  into  the   misdemeanour  drama, 


146    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

which  is  therefore  just  so  much  lost  time,  and  worse,  for 
emphasis  is  thrown  on  the  destructive  instead  of  on  the 
constructive  element  in  the  social  relation  existing  be- 
tween teacher  and  pupil. 

Sublimation 

I  have  several  times  had  occasion  to  speak  of  sub- 
limation, which  is  a  kind  of  displacement.  When  the 
surgeon  displaces  the  gratification  derived  from  inflcting 
pain  onto  that  derived  from  the  results  of  the  inflicting 
of  the  pain,  which  are  of  advantage  to  society,  he  is 
sublimating  a  trend  of  the  unconscious.  This  trend, 
if  left  unsublimated  and  allowed  to  come  directly  into 
consciousness  as  it  does  in  the  murderer,  let  us  say,  is 
opposed  to  society  and  renders  him  an  outcast.  The 
thoughts  which  precede  the  crime  also  segregate  him 
from  true  relations  with  society  even  before  the  crime  is 
committed. 

Sadism  is  only  one  of  the  many  infantile  traits  which 
are  manifested  not  only  in  but  out  of  school,  not  only 
by  children  but  by  adults.  Another  very  prominent  trait 
is  called  "  exhibitionism,"  or  the  desire  to  show  off.  In 
the  actual  infant  it  is  evinced  in  a  delight  in  taking  off 
clothes  and  running  around  naked.  In  adults  this  also 
occurs  and  in  some  morbid  cases  constitutes  a  crime. 
These  are  the  two  extremes  of  the  impulse,  both  in  an 
unsublimated  form.  These  impulses  of  sadism  and 
exhibitionism  are  what  are  called  partial  impulses.  They 
might  better  be  called  paired  impulses.  Each  one  of 
them  occurs  always  paired  with  the  so-called  ambivalent 
trend.     For  example,  the  impulse  to  exhibit  one's  person 


SUBLIMATION  147 

is  the  ambivalent  form  of  the  impulse  to  look  at  the 
persons  of  others.  This  tendency  to  peep  has  been 
given  legendary  expression  in  the  character  of  the  Peep- 
ing Tom  in  the  story  of  Godiva.  In  that  legend  the 
attitude  of  society  toward  the  adult  who  retains  this 
infantile  trait  is  expressed  by  the  statement  that  he  was 
struck  blind.  For  looking  at  Diana  in  the  bath,  Actaeon, 
in  Greek  myth,  was  killed  by  the  goddess'  dogs. 

But  the  ambivalence  is  evident.  The  desire  to  look 
presupposes  a  correlative  desire  to  be  looked  at.  The 
desire  to  take  pleasure  from  inflicting  pain  on  others  pre- 
supposes a  correlate  in  the  desire  to  derive  pleasure 
from  having  pain  inflicted  on  oneself.  So  that  here  we 
have  two  infantile  psychic  trends,  both  duplex  (ambi- 
valent) in  niture,  and  giving,  when  unequally  outgrown, 
four  broad  classifications  of  undeveloped  human  char- 
acter. The  child  who  grows  up  without  losing  its  desire 
to  exhibit  itself  naked  is  seen  in  the  woman  who  takes 
pleasure  (unconscious  though  it  may  be)  in  the  wearing 
of  abbreviated  attire.  It  may  be  said  to  be  a  general 
fact  that  women  are  more  likely  to  show  this  trait  than 
men,  as  is  seen  by  the  difference  in  the  conventional 
clothing  of  men  and  women. 

So  that  the  impulse  to  be  seen,  viewed  in  its  passive 
aspect,  may  be  counted  as  the  feminine  form  of  this  pair 
of  impulses,  both  of  which  are,  however,  in  every  human 
psyche,  even  in  adults,  more  or  less  sublimated.  And 
the  impulse  to  see,  as  an  active  trend,  is  correspondingly 
a  masculine  trait,  sublimated  more  or  less  in  all  humans, 
whether  men  or  women.  It  should  never  be  forgotten 
that  before  the  age  of  puberty  the  characteristics  of  boys 
and  girls  are  predominantly  active  and  passive,  but  can- 


148    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

not  be  called  really  masculine  and  feminine  traits. 
These  traits  are  not  fully  developed  in  the  individual 
until  after  making  the  choice  of  a  love  object.  So  that 
if  we  remember  that  these  traits  are  partial  trends  or 
ambivalent  or  paired  as  I  have  called  them,  and  that 
both  are  in  their  double  or  ambivalent  form  in  both 
sexes,  we  shall  have  a  clearer  idea  of  the  fourfold  nature 
of  humanity,  any  one  petal  of  which,  so  to  speak,  may 
grow  to  an  enlarged  condition  in  either  man  or  woman 
or  all  four  be  discarded  or  sublimated  as  they  should 
be  in  the  normally  developed  adult.  In  these  they  are 
outgrown  or  discarded  if  the  individual  grows  up  to  be 
an  average  normal  conventional  man  or  woman  with 
no  striking  peculiarities  and  doing  his  work  without 
the  desire  for  more  than  the  usual  applause  and  re- 
ward. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  person  Is  distinguished  for  his 
desire  to  appear  in  public,  then  his  exhlbltlonlstic  trait 
has  been  more  or  less  sublimated  or  made  socially  avail- 
able according  to  the  real  value  placed  on  it  by  society, 
a  value  which  sometimes  cannot  be  immediately  esti- 
mated. A  great  actor  is  an  example  of  a  successful 
sublimation  of  the  exhibltionistic  trend.  But  it  is  never- 
theless the  sublimation  of  an  infantile  trait  which  is 
possessed  by  the  average  adult  only  in  rudimentary 
form,  like  the  appendix  vermlformis.  The  sublimation  is 
the  employment  by  society.  Society  therein  selects  cer- 
tain individuals  whom,  so  to  speak,  it  licenses,  by  pay- 
ing them  good  salaries,  to  retain  that  particular  infan- 
tile trait,  for  Its  amusement  and  recreation.  Not  only 
does  society  sublimate  or  raise  up  this  trait  in  the  great 
actor,  but  it  may  be  equally  well  said,  from  the  point  of 


SUBLIMATION  149 

view  of  the  actor  himself,  that  he  sublimates  his  own 
early  tendency  by  employing  It  in  a  way  which  will  give 
pleasure  and  profit  to  his  fellow-men,  as  indeed  it  would 
not,  if  it  were  not  transmuted,  by  this  subliming  process, 
by  being  constantly  directed  with  unremitting  effort  to 
the  requirements  of  the  social  environment.  Thus  we 
may  either  say  that  the  actor  is  lifted  by  society  or  that 
he  raises  himself  by  adapting  his  desires  to  the  desires 
of  society  in  such  a  way  that  he  can  continue  to  get 
pleasure  from  a  source  whence  the  average  man  has 
long  since  ceased  to  derive  it — from  being  looked  at. 
But  whether  the  actor  lifts  himself  or  is  lifted  by  society, 
the  infantile  desire  is  said  to  be  sublimated. 

Just  as  in  the  case  of  the  sadist,  or  person  occupied 
with  cruelty,  the  anti-vlvlsectionist  activities  are  dis- 
placement, so,  in  the  case  of  exhibitionism,  the  histrionic 
activities  are  a  displacement.  The  pleasure  which  the 
unsublimated  desire  would  find  in  merely  being  looked 
at  is  reinforced  by  the  idea  that  some  other  end  than 
merely  being  looked  at  Is  being  attained  at  the  same 
time.  The  approval  of  society  shown  in  its  being  willing 
to  look  and  be  entertained  is  a  cover  for  the  pleasure 
itself  and  under  this  cover  the  Individual  seems  to  get 
society's  orders  to  go  ahead  full  speed  with  the  acting 
and  the  unconscious  of  the  actor  achieves  the  gratifica- 
tion of  its  desire. 

There  is  a  difference  in  degree,  however,  between  the 
sadist  sublimated  slightly  to  an  anti-vivisectionist  or  to 
an  inventor  of  improved  methods  for  executing  criminals 
and  the  sadist  who  is  sublimated  greatly  into  a  very  suc- 
cessful surgeon.  Society  does  not  grant  the  anti-vivisec- 
tionist a  very  great  reward,  either  spiritual  or  material, 


I50    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

for  his  degree  of  sublimation,  while  to  the  surgeon  it 
gives  a  very  substantial  recognition  both  in  money  and 
fame.  I  might  go  on  and  show  that  the  exact  parallel 
between  sublimation  and  social  approval  is  so  exact  that 
the  sublimation  of  a  trend  of  the  psyche  is  nothing  more 
or  less  than  the  selection  by  society  of  that  particular 
trend  for  its  own  use  or  amusement.  This  shows  very 
clearly  the  relation  of  society,  not  to  the  individual  as  a 
whole  but  to  certain  elements  in  his  character;  that  is, 
society's  relation  to  parts  of  individuals.  For  its  own 
purposes  society  takes  these  traits  in  different  indi- 
viduals and  develops  them  or  transmutes  them  into  their 
sublimations. 

Another  illustration  of  the  sublimation  of  the  exhibi- 
tion impulse  is  found  in  pictorial  art.  The  sculptor, 
painter  or  draughtsman  has  transmuted  his  desire  to  be 
seen  into  a  desire  to  have  the  work  of  his  hands  seen. 
By  the  analogical  reasoning  the  work  of  the  artist  is  in 
a  certain  sense  himself.  There  lies  the  displacement  in 
this  case.  The  work  takes  the  place  of  the  worker.  In 
his  thought  the  worker  is  displaced  by  his  work.  In  the 
work  he  can  get  a  full  gratification  of  his  craving  to 
be  seen,  a  desire  which  is  reinforced  by  the  approbation 
which  he  may  win  from  the  public.  His  craving  to  be 
seen  is  uplifted  by  society  from  the  crass  infantile  ex- 
position of  his  naked  body  in  which  he  delighted  when 
three  or  four  years  old  to  the  sublimated  form  of  ex- 
hibiting in  a  certain  sense  his  naked  soul,  a  sublimated 
form  of  exhibition  because  society,  of  which  he  is  a  part, 
has  picked  out  this  trait  and  marked  it  as  useful  for  its 
purposes. 

The  point  of  this  lengthy  analysis  of  the  partial  or 


SUBLIMATION  151 

ambivalent  impulses,  one  member  of  each  pair  being  al- 
ways in  the  unconscious,  is  that  in  one  sense  a  real  educa- 
tion is  exactly  this  same  sublimation  of  the  natural  in- 
stincts or,  as  will  immediately  be  seen,  the  socialization 
of  the  natural  instincts.  Without  this  aim  education  is 
indeed  a  misnomer,  for  it  does  not  draw  out  and  de- 
velop innate  desires,  adapting  them  to  its  special  needs, 
but  superimposes  a  foreign  body  like  a  veneer.  So  that 
we  now  have  something  to  add  to  the  original  definition 
of  education  with  which  we  started.  We  began  by  say- 
ing that  the  purpose  of  education  was  to  transform 
physical  energy  into  mental  energy,  and  we  now  see 
that  to  do  it  properly  it  has  not  only  to  be  transformed 
but  also  to  be  adapted,  that  is,  transformed  according  to 
a  pattern  which  is  made  for  it  by  society,  or  in  other 
words  sublimated.  So  that  the  aim  of  education  is  the 
sublimation  or  adaptive  transformation  of  physical  into 
psychical  energy. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  a  complete  sub- 
limation of  all  the  unconscious  craving  for  life,  love 
and  activity  can  be  or  need  be  made  in  the  case  of  each 
individual.  Only  the  surplus  energy,  which  is  indeed 
very  great,  is  necessary  to  be  sublimated.  H.  G.  Wells 
in  several  of  his  books  remarks  upon  the  fact  that  much 
of  the  misery  in  the  world  comes  from  the  surplus 
vitality  of  mankind  and  says  that  the  great  problem  is  to 
turn  it  from  destructive  to  constructive  lines. 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  sublimation  does  not  neces- 
sarily always  imply  the  transformation  of  the  physical  to 
the  mental  energy.  Purely  physical  energy  can  be  sub- 
limated without  turning  it  into  mental  energy.  The 
physical  work  of  the  digger  of  ditches,  which  is  pre- 


152    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

sumably  the  extreme  type  of  socialized  physical  energy, 
is  a  sublimation  in  that  it  serves  society,  while  if  a  man 
of  equal  physique  spaded  sand  all  day  long  on  the  sea- 
shore for  the  waves  to  wash  smooth  again,  he  would  not 
be  sublimating  because  his  actions  would  not  be  related 
to  society's  needs. 

Thus  sublimation  is  seen  to  lift  an  individual  up  out 
of  the  narrow  limitations  of  his  otherwise  isolated  self, 
and  unite  him  with  his  fellows  on  a  plane  higher  than 
that  on  which  he  would  be  living  in  solitariness.  The 
digger  of  ditches  does,  to  be  sure,  a  certain  small 
amount  of  mental  work  in  digging  along  a  line,  but  here 
the  physical  is  so  great  in  proportion  to  the  mental  that 
the  latter  can  almost  be  ignored.  It  cannot  be  abso- 
lutely igrlored,  however,  because  it  is  only  the  fact  that 
he  is  following  the  line  that  constitutes  the  social  ele- 
ment of  his  actions.  At  the  other  extreme  is  the 
draughtsman  in  whom  the  physical  energy  is  all  trans- 
muted, save  that  portion  which  holds  him  in  his  chair 
and  his  hand  in  the  proper  position.  Both  the  digger 
of  ditches  and  the  draughtsman  are  sublimating  their  ex- 
cess vitality,  the  former  without  and  the  latter  with  a 
transformation  of  physical  into  mental  energy. 

The  transition  from  physical  to  mental  activity  can 
be  made  in  an  instant;  by  man  and  by  animals  in  the 
most  natural  situations  it  is  made  in  a  twinkling,  as  is 
illustrated  in  the  change  from  running  to  watching.  In 
running  we  may  say  that  all  the  energies  of  the  organ- 
ism are  directed  outward;  and  when  the  animal  sud- 
denly stops  in  some  covert  and  crouches  watching 
intently  to  see  if  his  pursuer  has  followed  or  missed  his 
trail,  we  may  say  that  only  a  small  portion  of  his  activi- 


SUBLIMATION  153 

ties  are  directed  outward,  only  his  vision.  His  energy 
is  instantaneously  converted  from  purely  physical  to  the 
nearest  to  mental  this  side  of  truly  abstract  thinking. 
Children  at  play  similarly  alternate  between  activity  and 
passivity,  in  which  there  is  observable  a  certain  degree 
of  mental  activity. 

But  the  mentality  contained  in  these  passive  inter- 
ludes in  the  rhythm  of  activity  and  passivity  is  very  slight 
and  rarely  has  the  quality  of  directed  thinking.  Think- 
ing of  the  directed  variety,  however,  is  really  a  very- 
strenuous  activity,  so  that  it  is  almost  the  equivalent  in 
actual  energy  of  a  fight  or  a  flight  of  the  active  kind. 
This  is  the  kind  of  mental  activity  which  in  school  we 
expect  and  demand  that  the  pupil  carry  on.  The 
transition  from  physical  to  mental  activity  of  the  un- 
directed kind  is  readily  made  by  all  humans  alike,  young 
or  old.  It  is  taking  place  daily  and  hourly  out  of  school. 
But  in  school  we  are  looking  for  the  impossible  if  we  ex- 
pect to  see  the  transition  instantaneously  made  from 
physical  activity  to  directed  mental  activity.  My  idea 
is  that,  in  the  schools  of  the  future,  sublimation  will  be 
easily  and  normally  effected  to  very  high  levels  by  com- 
bining physical  activity  and  directed  mental  activity  in  a 
proportion  such  that  at  first  the  directed  mental  element 
will  be  very  slight.  The  next  grade  of  advance  will 
lessen  the  former  and  increase  the  latter  very  slightly 
and  so  on  until  the  proportions  are  exactly  as  desired. 
I  doubt  whether  this  can  ever  be  done  in  classes  at  whole- 
sale, because  the  rate  of  transition  to  directed  mental 
activity  varies  so  greatly  in  individuals. 

In  an  education  that  has  for  its  problem  the  trans- 
formation from  physical  to  directed  mental  activity  the 


154    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

sublimation  of  the  purely  physical  has  to  be  neglected. 
That  is  what  distinguishes  the  so-called  cultural  or  aca- 
demic from  vocational  education,  which  has  for  its  aim 
the  sublimation  of  the  purely  physical  activity,  and  from 
technical  education,  which  aims  at  a  directed  mental 
activity  having  for  its  object  the  improvement  in  meth- 
ods and  productiveness  of  the  physical  activity. 

The  great  fallacy  which  has  dominated  the  thinking 
of  all  men  for  so  many  centuries  is  that  the  submission 
of  the  purely  physical  is  of  a  lesser  value  than  that  of 
the  purely  mental.  There  is  no  proof  that  it  is.  One 
might  find  very  good  arguments  to  prove  quite  the  con- 
trary. Man  has  a  physical  nature  which  the  purely  men- 
tal tends  to  repress,  making  the  body  a  damaged  article 
through  neglect.  A  proper  proportion  of  the  mental  and 
physical  makes  for  a  longer,  happier  and  more  useful 
life.  But  society  has  for  centuries  more  richly  rewarded 
the  mental  than  the  physical  worker,  indicating  that  this 
is  the  line  in  which  social  evolution  is  progressing.  So 
possibly  it  is  inevitable  that  a  higher  value  must  always 
be  set  on  directed  thinking  than  on  directed  doing, 
though  it  seems  to  me  that  the  value  really  should  be 
different  and  not  higher,  for  if  all  eventually  should  at- 
tain this  end  of  sublimated,  directed  mental  activity,  the 
physical  medium  with  which  life  is  carried  on  would 
sensibly  deteriorate  and  with  it  the  mentality.  The  sup- 
position that  one  kind  of  activity  is  better  or  higher  than 
another  is,  then,  a  fallacy.  Having  a  mind  inseparably 
during  life  connected  with  a  body,  we  have  no  right  to 
develop  the  one  at  the  expense  of  the  other.  We  shall 
eventually,  then,  have  to  be  able  to  tell  a  person  when  he 
is  young  whether  he  belongs  in  the  class  which  is  capable 


DIFFUSE  DISPLACEMENT  155 

of  having  his  physical  energy  transformed  into  mental 
energy  or  not.  If  he  is  not,  we  shall  have  to  learn  how 
to  persuade  him  not  to  try  to  sublimate  the  wrong  kind  of 
energy.  Fortunately  a  goodly  number  of  young  persons 
realize  at  some  time  during  their  schooling  that  they  can 
more  readily  sublimate  their  physical  than  their  mental 
activities,  and  relieve  themselves  and  their  teachers  of 
the  unpleasant  duty  of  telling  them  so.  But  there  are 
many  yet  remaining  in  the  academic  institutions  whose 
time  is  woefully  wasted  in  fruitless  attempt  to  transform 
their  physical  energy  into  mental  energy,  an  attempt 
which  is  worse  than  fruitless  in  one  sense  because  the  dis- 
couragement which  they  experience  in  trying  to  do  what 
is  impossible  for  them  diffuses  itself  over  their  whole 
life. 

Diffuse  Displacement 

A  form  of  displacement  called  diffuse  displacement 
does  indeed  occur  very  commonly  in  normal  life  and 
quite  as  commonly  in  the  schoolroom.  It  is  the  tendency 
to  find  fault  with  everything.  The  cause  of  it  is  a 
defect  in  the  fault-finder.  This  depends  upon  the  prin- 
ciple (page  158)  that  it  is  impossible  to  see  in  the  ex- 
ternal world  what  does  not  already  exist  in  the  mind. 
An  Infant  playing  on  the  edge  of  a  parapet  over  which  a 
fall  would  be  fatal  does  not  see  the  danger.  The  ability 
to  see  the  danger  is  entirely  a  matter  of  mental  de- 
velopment. The  person  long  experienced  in  automobile 
driving  does  not  "  see  danger  "  in  this  form  of  locomo- 
tion as  does  one  who  has  never  driven  in  a  motor  car. 
He  may  have  seen  danger  in  the  days  when  he  was  learn- 
ing to  drive,  but  he  has,  if  not  neurotic,  developed  be- 


156    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

yond  the  seeing  of  danger  in  this  activity.  What  he  sees, 
as  is  well  known,  is  a  great  many  things  which  his  in- 
experienced passenger  could  not  see  in  the  short  time 
they  are  visible.  He  sees,  in  other  words,  things  he  has 
formerly  seen  and  in  a  sense  never  anything  absolutely 
new. 

This  principle  applies  with  peculiar  aptness  to  one's 
inability  to  criticize  anything  in  another  person,  without 
having  in  his  own  conscious  or  unconscious  mental  life 
the  same  defect  as  that  criticized.  This  principle,  too, 
if  fully  realized  by  all  people,  would  finally  cut  out  all 
censorious  criticism  from  the  social  relations  of  all  peo- 
ple. If  we  fully  believed  and  clearly  saw  that  we  could 
never  find  a  fault  in  another  which  we  didn't  have  in  our- 
selves, we  would  then  keenly  appreciate  the  fact  that 
every  time  we  found  fault  with  anyone  we  were  advertis- 
ing the  existence  of  that  in  ourselves  too. 

While  there  are  doubtless  many  apparent  exceptions 
to  this  principle,  I  think  it  is  undoubtedly  true  in  the 
broad  aspects  of  human  character.  The  boy  who  goes 
around  with  a  chip  on  his  shoulder  is  generally  pretty 
sure  of  a  fight.  Any  person  who  is  "  looking  for  trou- 
ble "  frequently,  to  say  the  least,  finds  it.  It  illustrates 
the  form  of  displacement  which  is  technically  known  as 
the  "  projection  of  a  reproach."  A  person  has  an  un- 
conscious feeling  of  guilt.  Unconsciously  he  feels  that 
he  is  a  coward.  Displacing  this  feeling  (a  displacement 
which  occurs  in  the  unconscious)  to  others,  he  acts  toward 
them  as  if  they  were  cowards — acts,  in  other  words,  as 
If  he  were  a  bully  himself.  Thus  it  is  when  a  bully  is 
really  tested  by  a  fearless  opponent  his  essential  sense 
of  inferiority  is  manifested  and  he  runs.     The  aggres- 


DIFFUSE  DISPLACEMENT  157 

sive  acts  of  the  bully  are  really  an  over-compensation 
for  his  unconscious  feeling  of  inferiority.  Of  course  he 
is  unaware  of  his  true  inferiority.  He  sincerely  and 
firmly  believes,  for  the  greater  part  of  the  time,  that  he 
is  physically  superior.  The  same  thing,  too,  applies 
to  the  intellectual  bully.  His  sense  of  inferiority  is 
only  unconscious.  It  may  then  be  asked,  what  is  the  im- 
portance of  another  person's  knowing  this,  if  the  physical 
or  mental  bully  is  himself  deceived  about  his  own  es- 
sential inferiority.  It  certainly  will  not  influence  him  to 
be  told  that  he  is  at  heart  a  coward.  He  has  probably 
been  told  that  many  times  already.  I  offer  it,  however, 
as  another  example  of  the  conscious  mind  being  occupied 
by  or  seized  by  a  certain  kind  of  thought  like  the  persons 
(the  sadistic  characters  mentioned  on  page  142)  whose 
thoughts  are  mostly  of  cruelty.  The  bully  is  one  who 
thinks  too  much  about  physical  prowess.  The  mechan- 
ism is  that  his  essential  inferiority,  of  which  he  has  been 
of  course  absolutely  unaware,  has  caused  him,  though  he 
did  not  know  why,  to  think  about  physical  superiority. 
The  bully  may  be  made  originally  in  childhood  by  a 
beating  at  the  hand  of  an  older  and  stronger  person. 
From  that  time  on,  and  particularly  if  his  mind  has  had 
no  chance  of  ingesting  other  ideas  on  account  of  the 
exigencies  of  his  environment,  he  thinks  of  personal  en- 
counters in  which  of  course  he  always  fancies  himself 
the  victor. 

Just  as  the  bully  will  criticize  his  coevals  for  their 
alleged  cowardice  until  they  become  tired  about  hearing 
about  such  a  topic  and  squelch  him,  so  any  person,  if  he 
be  naive  enough  to  find  fault  with  any  others,  will  criti- 
cize them  only  for  the  faults  which  he  has  himself.   And 


158    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

yet  he  is  not  conscious  of  having  those  faults  himself. 
The  only  way  he  becomes  conscious  of  the  faults  is  when 
he  attributes  them  to  other  people.  But  in  attributing 
them  to  other  people  he  is,  of  course,  explicitly  declaring 
those  faults  to  be  the  other  people's  and  not  his  own. 
The  very  necessity  of  attributing  them  to  other  people 
is  an  effort  to  get  rid  of,  to  foist  upon  others,  what  is 
really  his  own.  He  thus  expresses  his  desire  to  be  free 
from  those  defects.  That  is  his  way  of  freeing  himself 
from  those  faults — by  shoving  them  off  onto  other 
people. 

Here  we  see  how  purely  a  matter  of  wishing  it  is, 
how  the  act  of  criticizing  or  fault-finding  is  the  conscious 
expression  of  the  unconscious  desire  to  have  the  virtues 
which  are  the  opposites  of  those  vices  which  are  blamed 
in  others.  Thus  only  can  we  become  conscious  of  our 
own  faults — when  we  find  that  we  have  attributed  them 
to  others.  So  that  when  Brown  says,  "  Smith  is  an  ill- 
tempered  man,"  he  should  add,  "  which  shows  that  I 
am  ill-tempered  in  noting  it  in  him."  If  Owen  More 
says :  "  Old  Gotrox  is  a  detestable  miser,"  he  should  add, 
in  order  to  tell  the  whole  truth,  "  but  my  remark  shows 
that  I  am  stingy  myself,  or  I  should  never  have  thought 
it  of  him."  If  Mrs.  McCray  Fish  says,  "  That  Miss 
Arma  Dillo  has  a  perfectly  horrid  nature,"  she  must,  in 
order  to  include  all  that  accusation  implies,  continue, 
"  but,  of  course,  I  suppose  I'm  a  mean  thing  myself  to  be 
saying  so." 

If  we  are  sufficiently  well  read  in  human  nature  to  In- 
terpret the  manifold  displacement  mechanisms  of  the 
mind,  we  shall  now  clearly  see  that  almost  all  statements 
about  human  nature  involve  displacements  of  one  kind 


DIFFUSE  DISPLACEMENT  159 

or  another.  And  in  the  sphere  of  human  mental  qual- 
ities we  cannot,  without  realizing  the  universality  of  this 
mechanism,  get  the  full  sense  of  the  statement  that  al- 
most nothing  that  a  man,  woman  or  child  can  say  about 
their  own  or  their  neighbours'  characters,  mental  or 
spiritual,  can  possibly  be  the  truth.  In  matters  of  pure 
human  nature  nobody  naturally  tells  the  truth.  They 
think  they  want  to,  but  they  are  completely  turned  about 
by  their  own  unconscious  wishes.  Whatever  one  says 
is  almost  sure  to  be  quite  the  opposite  of  the  truth.  We 
can  tell  the  concrete  facts,  such  as  the  time  of  day  or 
the  measures  of  things,  although  scientists  will  there  re- 
mind us  that  the  constant  error  and  the  personal  equa- 
tion are  inevitable  in  all  judgments  of  qualit)\ 

In  the  schoolroom  we  find  the  displacements  rampant 
and  uncorrected  both  in  teacher  and  in  pupil.  The 
teacher,  if  disposed  to  be  critical,  judges  according  to  the 
social  standard  with  which  she  is  herself  familiar.  She 
notices  in  pupils  only  the  deportment  which  she  is  trained 
in,  qualified  to  examine  and  report  upon.  Of  course  she 
sees  only  the  fine  qualities  she  herself  has.  But  hav- 
ing them,  there  is  no  unconscious  urge  to  transfer  or 
displace  them  to  others  and  so  praising  others  is  not  in- 
stinctively strained  after  by  the  unconscious.  Only  the 
Omnipotent  can  see  that  everything  is  good.  The  parti- 
potent  can  see  only  the  fragments  of  the  goodness  of  the 
earth  or  the  inhabitants  thereof.  The  beauty  is  in  the 
eye  of  the  beholder  in  a  very  literal  sense. 

The  most  deficient  classes  in  school  are  those  whose 
members  are  always  looking  out  for  unfairness,  par- 
tiality, dishonesty  and  misbehaviour  on  the  part  of  the 
other   members   of  the   class.     The   displacements   are 


i6o    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

legion.  Their  minds  are  more  occupied  with  moral  than 
with  intellectual  questions,  because  they  are  themseleves 
more  immoral  than  the  classes  whose  minds  are  more 
occupied  with  the  subject-matter  of  their  lessons.  True 
occupiedness  with  their  lessons  crowds  out  questions  of 
deportment  or  dishonesty,  and  no  accusations  are  made. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  teacher  that  is  a  martinet  in  dis- 
cipline shifts  the  mental  activity  from  the  intellectual  to 
the  moral  question,  much  to  the  detriment  of  the  school 
work.  True  work  truly  accomplished  is  honesty  it- 
self. 

If  the  relations  between  teacher  and  pupil  could  be  in- 
tellectual relations  only,  if  the  minds  of  both  parties 
could  be  entirely  occupied  with  the  subject-matter  of 
the  course  of  study  during  the  time  supposed  to  be  de- 
voted to  it,  the  displacements  would  be  avoided.  These 
displacements  are,  however,  universal  unconscious  men- 
tal mechanisms,  and  themselves  partly  constitute  the  real 
cause  why  an  absolutely  unified  relation  cannot  exist  be- 
tween the  pupil  and  the  work.  There  are  many  other 
determinants,  one  of  which  is  mentioned  (page  194) 
as  the  unconscious  wish  to  do  something  of  real  present 
value,  and  the  knowledge,  partly  conscious  but  progres- 
sively more  and  more  repressed,  that  the  activities  of  the 
school  work  are  of  no  real  present  value.  If  ever  they 
ask  what  is  the  use  of  studying  this  and  that,  the  children 
are  told  that  it  trains  their  minds  and  that  a  well-trained 
mind  will  be  at  some  time  in  the  future  a  great  advan- 
tage to  them,  and  they  will  be  much  better  able  to  gain 
at  that  future  time  what  they  will  want  at  that  future 
time.  But,  to  the  unconscious,  present  wants  alone  have 
dynamic    force    to    cause    action.      The   unconscious    is 


DIFFUSE  DISPLACEMENT  i6i 

unorlented  toward  time  or  reality.  It  knows  no  future, 
and  it  only  wishes,  and  in  terms  of  the  present. 

So  that  from  one  point  of  view  we  are  in  present 
education  attempting  to  substitute  a  future  want  for  a 
present  want,  a  sort  of  displacement  designed  to  drive 
out  the  other  natural  and  unconscious  displacements  so 
characteristic  of  all  human  undirected  thinking  or  phan- 
tasying  (wishing  expressed  in  mental  images).  This 
may  be  considered  analogous  to  the  self-denial  which, 
according  to  the  principles  of  political  economy,  we  sup- 
pose to  be  necessary  for  a  man  to  exercise  in  order  to 
create  capital.  He  denies  himself  a  present  small  grati- 
fication, saving  a  penny  now  in  order  to  have  a  pound 
later. 

This  is  a  very  difficult  thing  to  do,  because  it  is  abso- 
lutely contrary  to  the  trends  of  the  unconscious  wish, 
which  always  presses  for  present  gratification.  As  we 
have  seen,  one  of  the  commonest  forms  of  displacement 
is  an  unconscious  replacement  of  one  idea  containing  the 
external  form  of  a  wish  by  another  idea  which  is  some- 
what similar  to  it.  The  form  of  the  original  wish,  for 
instance  the  desire  to  be  cruel,  is  contrary  to  the  require- 
ments of  society,  while  the  substituted  wish  form,  for 
instance  the  desire  to  perform  surgical  operations,  is  in 
conformation  with  the  requirements  of  society. 

The  displacement  is  the  acceptance  of  the  one  wish 
for  the  .other  and  the  ignorance  that  in  the  second  wish 
form  the  original  wish  is  to  a  certain  extent  satisfied. 
It  is  much  as  if  the  person  had  a  strong  desire  to  push  or 
to  pull,  and  that  desire  could  be  turned  to  good  advan- 
tage by  getting  him  to  push  a  hand-cart  or  to  pull  a 
wagon.    The  unconscious,  while  always  in  a  state  exactly 


1 62    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

analogous  to  a  supposed  person  wanting  merely  to  pull 
and  not  wanting  to  pull  any  particular  thing,  is  never 
unaccompanied  by  consciousness  in  some  form,  which 
always  gives  a  definite  shape  to  the  desire  to  pull.  The 
wish  has  a  form  given  to  it  by  the  physical  constitution 
of  the  individual  who  is  the  stage  whereon  the  wishes 
appear.  If  an  individual  is  endowed  with  a  strong 
physique,  he  will  desire  to  use  it,  to  use  all  his  muscles 
and  send  things  flying.  If  he  has  a  big  voice,  he  will 
want  to  use  it;  if  he  has  an  eye  sensitive  to  shades  of 
colour,  he  will  want  to  work  in  colour  in  some  way. 
Also  his  mental  experiences  will  give  form  to  his  wishes, 
as  we  very  familiarly  see  when  a  child  has  a  new  experi- 
ence and  wishes  immediately  to  repeat  it.  If  by  his 
parents  this  new  experience  is  considered  good,  i.e. 
advantageous  to  society  as  they  understand  it,  the  wish 
to  repeat  it  will  be  gratified;  but  if  considered  dis- 
advantageous, an  immediate  substitution  or  displace- 
ment is  consciously  made  by  the  parents.  A  baby  wants 
to  suck  its  thumb,  and  either  a  pacifier  is  given  to  it,  or 
a  pair  of  spherical  metal  gauntlets  is  put  on  its  hands. 
The  pacifier  satisfi.es  its  desire  to  suck  and  saves  the 
thumb  from  being  deformed  but  not  the  mouth.  The 
gauntlets  are  interesting  in  quite  another  manner,  and 
so  satisfy  a  craving,  but  not  the  original  one.  The  form 
of  the  first  craving  is  displaced  by  that  of  the  second, 
though  in  a  sense  it  may  be  said  that  the  craving  is 
essentially  the  same  in  either  case.  The  indirection  is 
a  mark  of  the  substitution.  The  baby  does  not  know 
or  does  not  appear  to  know  the  difference. 

We  are  all  in  the  baby's  position  in  all  of  the  uncon- 
scious substitutes  made  for  our  gratification  by  society 


RATIONALIZATION  1 6^ 

and  environment.  We  do  not  know  the  difference.  We 
are  satisfying  our  primordial  craving  every  moment  * 
(yes,  even  in  vehemently  expressing  our  dissatisfaction), 
though  we  do  not  know  that  it  is  the  unconscious  wish 
that  we  are  satisfying  and  not  the  conscious  desire  which 
alone  we  think  we  are  satisfying. 

Exactly  the  same  thing  is  going  on  in  every  school- 
room every  minute.  Not  only  the  unconscious  displace- 
ments, about  which  the  pupil  knows  nothing  and  which 
are  supplied  by  the  environment,  but  the  consciously 
intended  displacements  which  the  teacher  is  constantly 
endeavouring  to  make,  and  which  are  unconsciously 
resisted  by  the  pupil. 

Rationalization 

A  man  who  smoked  more  tobacco  than  he  thought  he 
ought  to  began  to  cut  down  on  his  cigars  on  account 
of  expense.  He  preferred  cigars  to  tobacco  in  any  other 
form,  but  smoked  a  pipe  for  economy,  getting,  however, 
a  certain  amount  of  real  pleasure  from  it.  Though  still 
longing  for  cigars,  which  he  used  to  buy  by  the  box,  and 
of  the  ten-cent  quality,  he  persistently,  after  his  resolu- 
tion, refrained  from  buying  a  box  of  them,  knowing  that 
he  would  smoke  six  a  day,  a  waste  of  money  which  he 
could  ill  afford.  He  would  buy  two  ten-cent  cigars  on 
his  way  home  and  smoke  one  after  dinner,  keeping  the 
next  for  next  day's  dinner.  Then  he  would  see 
this  cigar  after  breakfast  the  next  morning,  and  would 
smoke  it.     Thereafter  he  would  buy  only  one  ten-cent 

*I  shall  have  a  great  deal  more  to  say  about  the  continual  satisfaction 
of  unconscious  wishes  on  pages   167   and  257. 


1 64    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

cigar.  Later  he  felt  so  virtuous  about  this  economy 
that  he  thought  if  he  denied  himself  two  cigars  a  day 
he  might  as  well  have  a  moderately  good  one  (this  was 
before  the  war),  and  would  buy  a  fifteen-cent  cigar. 
Occasionally  thereafter  he  would  omit  a  day  for  some 
reason,  either  that  he  did  not  happen  to  pass  the  usual 
cigar  store  or  that  he  was  in  a  hurry  and  did  not  want 
to  take  time. 

Once  he  was  met  at  the  train  by  his  daughter,  who 
walked  home  with  him.  They  had  an  errand  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  street  from  the  cigar  store.  As  they 
started  to  cross,  she  said  to  him :  "  Aren't  you  going 
to  get  your  cigar?"  He  took  this  as  an  excuse,  as  he 
did  everything  that  came  along  and  bought  one  at 
another  store  they  passed,  but  compromised  with  him- 
self and  bought  a  ten-cent  cigar  instead  of  a  fifteen-cent 
one.  The  next  day  when  he  was  trying  to  pass  the  cigar 
store  the  thought  came  to  him:  "You  had  only  a  poor 
cigar  last  night.  You  might  get  a  fifteen-cent  one  now, 
to  make  up  for  it." 

He  had  occasional  headaches  which  his  conscience 
suggested  to  him  came  from  too  much  smoking.  But 
he  also  had  a  slight  indigestion  now  and  then,  and  his 
desire  for  cigars  suggested  that  the  headaches  might 
just  as  well  come  from  the  indigestion  and  have  nothing 
to  do  with  tobacco,  and  so  then  he  would  buy  and  smoke 
a  cigar.  It  then  came  into  his  mind  that  if  there  was  any 
doubt  about  it,  he  could  prove  it  by  quitting  smoking  for 
a  time,  and  see  if  he  had  any  headaches.  The  idea  that 
the  tobacco  might  also  cause  the  indigestion  never 
occurred  to  him. 

Finally  he  became  disgusted  with  the  reasons  which  he 


RATIONALIZATION  165 

was  habitually  giving  to  himself  for  smoking,  and  saw 
that  any  reason  whatever  was  reason  enough  to  induce 
him  to  smoke,  and  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  one  reason 
was  just  as  good  as  another.  His  reasons  in  other 
words  were  really  as  rational  as  those  giving  excuses 
to  the  drinker  for  imbibing,  in  the  following  old  dog- 
gerel : 

//  all  be  true  that  I  do  think, 

There  are  five  reasons  we  should  drink: 

Good  wine,  a  friend,  or  being  dry. 

Or  lest  we  may  be  by  and  by. 

Or  any  other  reason  why. 

The  motive  force  of  the  reason  is  therefore  dependent 
not  on  the  reason  itself,  but  on  the  desire  to  drink,  or, 
in  the  case  of  the  man  above  referred  to,  the  desire  to 
smoke  cigars.  In  other  words,  the  so-called  reason, 
which  should  in  reality  be  a  cogent  reason,  or  one  com- 
pelling the  man  to  do  something,  was  in  this  case  merely 
the  act  that  released  a  great  force  of  desire  into  external 
realization.  Any  fact,  whether  relevant  or  not,  was 
used  as  an  excuse.  "  Any  other  reason  why  "  would  do 
as  well  as  the  legitimate  reason  for  smoking  a  cigar,  if 
there  was  any  legitimate  reason. 

One  might  safely  make  a  general  statement  that  any- 
thing will  satisfy  us  as  a  reason  to  justify  us  in  doing  any- 
thing we  want  to  do.  There  are  two  factors  in  this 
situation,  both  of  which  should  be  mentioned:  first  that 
there  is  no  difference  in  the  quality  of  reasons  accepted 
by  people  for  doing  what  they  want  to  do,  and  second 
that  they  universally  feel  this  need  of  justifying  an  action 
which  at  the  same  time  they  feel  to    be  unwise.    We  are 


1 66    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

all  giving  ourselves  or  other  people  reasons  which  we 
offer  in  defence  of  our  actions  (and  of  course  we  think 
some  at  least  of  them  need  defence)  because  we  feel  that 
we  need  to  give  reasons  for  our  actions.  This  practically 
universal  tendency  to  justify  our  actions,  or  our  thoughts 
on  verbal  principles,  is  known  as  rationalization. 

The  rationalizations  of  the  cigar  smoker  above  men- 
tioned were  conscious,  ones.  He  knew  that  in  a  sense 
he  was  fooling  himself  all  the  time.  But  the  majority  of 
rationalizations  are,  in  the  case  of  most  people,  entirely 
unconscious.  People  do  not  know  that  the  reasons  they 
give  for  a  statement  or  an  opinion  or  an  action  are  dic- 
tated to  them  by  their  own  unconscious,  and  that  their 
apparent  cogency  is  attributable  solely  to  their  congru- 
ence with  the  desires  of  the  people  giving  them  as 
reasons.  If  we  realize  the  fact  that  most  reasons  are 
mere  rationalizations,  we  shall  soon  clearly  see  that  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten  the  reasons  assigned  by  persons 
for  doing  anything  are  not  the  real  causes  why  they  do 
those  things,  but  are  indirect  expressions  of  the  uncon- 
scious wish.  It  is  quite  enlightening  to  realize  that  if 
you  are  unacquainted  with  your  own  unconscious,  not 
a  single  reason  you  can  possibly  assign  for  anything 
you  think,  say  or  do  is  the  real  cause  of  your  thinking, 
saying  or  doing  it.  The  real  cause  is  the  unconscious 
wish  of  which  you  cannot  possibly,  without  a  thorough 
study  of  your  own  unconscious,  be  aware  in  the  least 
degree.  Only  after  a  thorough  analysis  by  an  expert  ana- 
lyst can  you  trace  any  of  your  actions  to  their  true  cause. 

This  gives  a  clear  expose  of  the  absolute  futility  of 
asking  a  child  why  he  did  such  and  such  a  thing — for 
instance,  committed  some  form  of  disorder.     He  does 


RATIONALIZATION  1 67 

not  know  and  could  not  tell  if  he  tried.  Some  will 
simply  sit  or  stand  mute,  looking  on  the  floor.  Others 
will  fabricate  more  or  less  glib  excuses  which  are,  to 
the  teacher,  quite  manifestly  mere  excuses,  while  those 
who  are  less  sophisticated  will  feel  miserable  because 
they  think  the  teacher  wants  them  to  say  something  and 
they  cannot  do  so.  Why  they  did  not  study  their  lessons, 
why  they  made  this  or  that  mistake,  etc.,  all  are  quite 
as  much  unknown  to  them  as  are  the  real  causes  of  his 
action  to  the  habitual  rationalizer. 

From  this  human  tendency  to  rationalize  every  one 
of  their  acts  emerges  the  fact  that  all  people  do  what 
they  want  to  and  subsequently  seek  to  align  their  actions 
with  the  principles  of  social  living  by  assigning  reasons 
for  doing  what  they  want  to  do. 

And  from  this  it  appears  that  whatever  people  are 
doing  is  what  they  want  to  do.  This  is  the  fact  which 
is  hardest  to  believe  of  all  the  facts  recently  discovered 
about  the  human  soul.  If  it  is  true  that  all  wishes  are 
gratified  in  one  of  two  ways,  either  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously (page  257),  it  is  also  true  that  whatever  people 
are  doing  all  the  time  is  fulfilling  their  wishes.  It  seems 
quite  an  outrage  on  common  sense  to  suppose  that  a  poor 
man  is  poor  because  he  wants  to  be  poor,  or  that  a  sick 
man  is  sick  because  he  wants  to  be  sick,  or  that  an 
unfortunate  wants  to  be  unfortunate;  but  it  is  the  literal 
truth.  Only  we  must  remember  that  in  being  poor,  sick 
or  unfortunate  it  is  frequently  only  the  unconscious  wish 
that  is  being  fulfilled,  and  there  are  different  degrees  of 
unconsciousness  in  wishes. 

If  the  particular  man  is  utterly  unaware  of  any  pos- 
sible advantage  that  could  come  to  him  from  his  being 


1 68    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

sick,  his  wish  which  is  being  fulfilled  is  totally  uncon- 
scious. If  the  particular  person  who  is  poor  cannot 
possibly  imagine  any  advantages  in  being  poor,  his  wish 
to  be  poor  is  only  an  unconscious  one.  But  there  are 
many  poor  men  who  have  found  compensations  or  who 
have  said  that  they  found  compensations  in  poverty; 
and,  as  for  the  unfortunate,  why,  "  Sweet  are  the  uses 
of  adversity,"  words  from  a  speech  which  is  a  beauti- 
ful example  of  rationalization,  for  in  that  soliloquy  the 
duke  is  merely  justifying  his  own  inactivity  and  his  sub- 
missiveness  to  the  stronger  will  of  his  brother. 

It  has  been  proved  that  many  accidents  resulting  in 
injury  have  been  in  reality  merely  the  fulfilment  of 
unconscious  wishes  of  the  person  injured,  if  he  was  the 
cause  of  the  accident,  or  of  the  causer  of  the  accident, 
if  the  person  who  was  injured  was  in  any  way  inimical 
to  him.  The  fact  is  recognized  in  law  in  the  term 
"  criminal  negligence."  It  might  almost  be  said  that 
every  catastrophe  except  some  cases  of  death  by  lightning 
is  the  expression  of  some  unconscious  wish  of  some 
person  or  group  of  persons.  I  groan  under  the  present 
conditions  of  the  high  cost  of  living,  and  I  know  full  well 
that  I  am  not  doing  a  thing  to  prevent  it,  and  that  I 
must  wish  it,  at  any  rate  unconsciously,  more  than  a  low 
cost,  or  at  any  rate  I  and  all  the  others  who  similarly 
groan  are  desiring  other  things  which  we  devote  our 
energies  to  getting,  more  than  we  would  the  getting  of 
the  low  cost,  or  we  would  all  unite  and  get  it. 

The  axiom  that  what  we  are  getting  is  the  actual  ful- 
filment of  our  conscious  or  unconscious  wishes  is  of 
extreme  interest  in  that  other  but  immured  little  world 
of  the  schoolroom. 


RATIONALIZATION  1 69 

What  the  pupils  are  doing  is  what  they  wish  to  do  in 
spite  of  all  external  control,  suggestive  or  dogmatic. 
And  at  the  same  time  they  are  being  trained  in  rationali- 
zation. Those  who  are  naive  enough  to  give  expression 
to  every  wish  which  emerges  into  their  consciousness  are 
at  once  reprimanded  and  the  unconscious  wish,  instead  of 
becoming  conscious  in  its  original  form,  is  displaced  to 
some  other  form.  Its  unconscious  nature  is  concealed 
and  its  unconscious  form  is  no  longer  known.  The 
unconscious  wishes  are  banned  as  unspeakable,  horrible. 
They  must  be  put  out  of  sight.  They  must  be  put  in  a . 
place  where  we  cannot  know  about  them  any  longer,  not 
even  what  they  do  to  us  without  our  knowledge.  That 
attitude  is  about  as  sensible  as  turning  our  backs  on  a 
wild  beast  in  a  forest,  so  that  we  could  put  him  out  of 
sight  and  out  of  mind. 

Pupils  in  schools  are  trained  in  rationalization,  for 
they  are  permitted  to  do  what  they  wish,  and  no  power 
can  prevent  them,  and  they  are  questioned  and  reasoned 
with  and  taught  to  give  the  wrong  reasons  for  their  acts. 
An  unconscious  wish  can  be  fulfilled  by  an  act  which  is 
composite  in  its  nature,  partly  conscious  and  partly  uncon- 
scious, the  conscious  element  of  it  representing  the 
compliance  with  the  school  situation  and  the  unconscious 
element  being  there  all  the  time  and  constituting  the 
fulfilment  of  the  unconscious  wish.  Thus  a  boy  may  be 
told  to  leave  the  room,  and  he  leaves  it,  complying  with 
the  request,  and  apparently  not  fulfilling  any  unconscious 
wish,  because  he  is  being  disgraced  and  placed  in  a 
situation  of  inferiority.  But  he  makes  faces  and  walks 
slowly  to  the  door  and  slams  it  when  he  goes  out,  thus 


lyo    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

fulfilling  his  conscious  desire  to  get  even  with  the  teacher, 
and  his  unconscious  desire  to  exhibit. 

In  a  state  of  society  there  are  no  simple  acts.  All  are 
composite.  If  there  were  only  two  people  in  the  world, 
and  they  lived  within  each  other's  perception,  nothing 
that  one  of  them  did  would  be  without  its  effect  on  him- 
self and  on  the  other.  In  a  schoolroom  of  forty  pupils 
there  may  be  i,6oo  motives  for  a  child's  doing  one  thing 
or  another,  If  by  motive  we  imply  causes  both  in  the  child 
and  in  the  environment. 

When  I  said  that  what  the  pupils  are  doing  is  what 
they  wish  to  do,  I  mean  of  course  what  they  uncon- 
sciously wish  to  do.  Consciously  they  may  very  keenly 
wish  to  do  something  other  than  what  they  are  doing, 
but  in  the  condition  of  being  baffled  in  their  conscious 
wishes  not  to  go  to  school,  or  not  to  learn  that  particular 
lesson,  or  even  In  their  conscious  wish  to  excel  in  the 
subject  they  are  still  studying,  they  are  in  a  condition 
where  the  unconscious  wishes  are  much  more  likely  to 
be  expressed  (in  a  disguised  form,  of  course).  When 
anyone  Is  baffled,  all  the  inceptive  movements,  which 
In  the  successful  activity  here  obstructed  are  necessarily 
retained  within  the  organism,  struggle  to  issue  into 
the  external  world  in  forms,  popularly  described  as 
fidgeting,  fussing  or  uneasy  motions,  forms  of  motion 
which  are  nothing  but  a  more  direct  expression  of  the 
unconscious  wish  than  would  be  the  case  if  the  attempted 
action  which  Is  being  obstructed  had  not  been  begun.  In 
a  sense  fidgeting  Is  a  more  unconscious  action  than  a 
great  many  others.  We  do  not  foresee  each  motion  as 
we  do  when  we  are  doing  something  according  to  a  plan, 
and  we  sometimes  do  not  know  what  we  are  doing  at  the 


SUMMARY  171 

very  time  when  we  are  doing  it.  When  we  are  doing 
something  according  to  a  plan  we  have  an  additional 
means  of  remembering  it  other  than  ordinary  retentive- 
ness;  and  after  fidgeting  awhile  we  can  rarely  remember 
what  we  have  done.  Thus  the  uneasiness  of  children  in 
a  schoolroom  is  a  direct  manifestation  of  the  unconscious 
wish. 

Summary 

In  this  chapter  we  have  seen  that  identification,  ''fL 
fundamental  mechanism  based  on  similarity,  is  further 
differentiated  into  projection  and  introjection,  and  that 
both  of  these  are  entirely  unconscious;  we  have  seen  that 
compensation  is  a  conscious  tendency  balancing  an  uncon- 
scious one,  that  this  compensation  is  mediated  through 
the  displacement  of  ideas,  and  that  rationalization  is  an 
ingrained  habit  of  humanity  to  give,  after  an  action,  a 
reason  for  it  which  is  never  the  true  cause  of  the  action. 
To  the  concept  of  libido  as  a  creative  wish  is  added  the 
consideration  that  it  may  be  sublimated  or  devoted  to 
aim.s  essentially  non-sexual  but  productive.  All  these 
mechanisms  are  as  clearly  in  evidence  in  the  schoolroom 
as  anywhere  else,  and  it  is  a  very  great  advantage  for 
the  teacher  to  become  aware  of  them. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   AIM   OF    EDUCATION 

After  twenty  years  of  teaching  In  a  secondary  school 
I  am  convinced  that  the  modes  of  thinking  on  the  part  of 
many  children  are  irremediably  (without  the  teacher's 
knowing  of  the  effects  of  the  unconscious)  twisted,  and 
that  they  are  so  by  virtue  of  their  numerous  complexes. 
I  have  seen  class  after  class  of  bright-looking  children, 
both  girls  and  boys,  develop  utterly  unnecessary  and 
retarding  resistances  against  not  only  my  own  but  other 
subjects.  Repeatedly  in  the  classroom  I  have  developed 
the  fact  that  the  pupils  perfectly  well  knew  what  was 
necessary  in  order  to  express  themselves  tersely  and 
clearly.  But  I  have  found  that  the  pupils  are  governed 
by  an  unconscious  wish  not  to  make  a  good  showing  in 
school,  not  to  perform  thoroughly  and  well  the  tasks  set. 
There  exists  a  deep-rooted  unconscious  desire  to  under- 
value the  academic  training  and  to  exaggerate  its 
difficulties,  partly,  no  doubt,  because  of  the  parental  point 
of  view  that  the  curriculum  is  too  long  or  too  compli- 
cated, and  partly  because  of  the  unconscious  resistance 
to  authority  of  any  kind — a  resistance  which  is  natural 
to  all  humans. 

But  the  main  point  to  be  emphasized  in  this  chapter 
is  the  fact  of  the  very  early  determination  of  these  traits 
by  the  ill-advised  (or,  better,  un-advised)  actions  of 
parents.     Much  has  been  written  about  the  unfortunate 

17a 


EARLY  IMPRESSIONS  173 

results  of  neglecting  adenoids,  enlarged  tonsils,  defective 
teeth  and  eyes,  but  very  little  upon  the  purely  mental 
aspect  of  the  problem. 

Early  Impressions 

And  first  of  all  it  is  not  generally  understood,  either 
by  parents  or  teachers,  how  supremely  important  are  the 
impressions  received  by  the  boy  or  girl  at  the  very  incep- 
tion of  mentality,  that  is,  during  the  first  years  of  life 
— from  one  to  five  years  of  age. 

The  period  of  the  child's  life  before  it  is  old  enough 
even  to  go  to  kindergarten  is  in  all  ways  the  most 
important  in  its  life  in  the  dominating  effect  it  has  on 
the  major  traits  of  character  of  later  years.  The  child 
is  impressed  by  everything,  and  particularly  by  the 
moods  and  manners  of  the  personal  environment, 
impressed  in  ways  and  to  a  degree  hitherto  unrecognized, 
impressed  so  forcibly  that  on  the  plastic  material, 
through  which  the  soul  is  expressed,  an  almost  permanent 
matrix  is  imprinted  the  changes  in  which  wrought  by  sub- 
sequent events  are  of  well-nigh  negligible  value. 

The  design  of  that  matrix  consists  largely  of  affective 
material,  or  is  really  an  affective  pattern.  It  is  as  if  the 
temperament  was  fixed  at  that  early  age,  the  tendency 
to  be  extraverted  or  introverted  finally  determined,  the 
respect  for  authority  created  (or  ever  after  lost),  and 
in  general  the  social  or  asocial  nature  of  the  individual's 
reactions  to  his  human  environment  are  moulded  in  the 
pre-school  days  in  such  a  way  that  they  automatically 
colour  and  modify  all  the  individual's  later  acts. 

If  the  child  has  both  parents  who  are  sexually  well 


174    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

mated,  there  results  in  the  home  atmosphere  so  invig- 
oratlng  an  air  of  satisfaction  and  comfort  and  love 
that  the  child's  own  nature  is  inspired  into  being  warm 
and  sunny.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  child  has  for  par- 
ents a  married  couple  between  whom  there  is  not  a 
complete  physical  and  spiritual  union,  there  is  lacking 
for  his  own  subsequent  love-life  an  important,  indeed  es- 
sential, element,  a  lack  which  is  perceived  by  the  child  at 
once,  whether  consciously  or  unconsciously.  In  this  case 
the  child  lacks  at  least  a  part  of  one  parent,  is,  let  us 
say,  three-quarters  parented  (to  make  a  verb  out  of  a 
noun),  or  three-eighths  parented. 

Now,  the  pattern  for  the  subsequent  love-life  of  the 
boy  or  girl  Is  imprinted  upon  his  soul  by  the  uncon- 
scious perceptions  of  the  child  before  the  age  of  five, 
possibly  three,  and  whether  he  sleeps  in  the  same  room 
with  his  parents  or  not,  he  will  unconsciously  perceive 
and  unconsciously  interpret  the  symbolism  of  the  actions 
of  his  parents  in  relation  to  each  other.  He  will  perceive 
how  and  in  what  tone  of  voice  they  address  each  other, 
and  will  know,  unconsciously  to  be  sure,  whether  there  is 
in  that  tone  the  full  sonority  of  the  persons  whose  love 
is  entirely  and  completely  devoted  to  the  love  of  the  soul 
as  well  as  body  mate.  Even  if  these  perceptions 
are  unconscious  for  years  or  forever,  they  will  determine 
the  adolescent's  attitude  toward  persons  of  the  opposite 
sex. 

Conjidence 

For  it  is  in  these  earliest  years  that  sexual  confidence 
is  developed  or  stunted,  and  it  Is  accelerated  or  retarded 
solely  by  observation  of  the  sexual  confidence  on  the  part 


CONFIDENCE  175 

of  those  by  whom  the  child's  earliest  years  are  influenced. 
To  take  only  one  instance,  the  habit  of  looking  squarely 
into  the  eyes  of  another  is  a  sign  of  the  greatest  love 
significance.  The  eye  is,  above  all  other  features  of 
the  face,  the  truest  indication  of  love  power.  The  eye 
that  shifts  from  the  gaze  of  another  is  the  gaze  of  a  child 
who,  by  the  parents  or  their  surrogates  in  its  earliest 
years,  has  been  shamed,  punished,  ridiculed,  shocked  or 
what  not.  The  eye,  on  the  other  hand,  which  shifts 
toward  the  eye  of  another  is  the  eye  of  a  child  which 
has  been  brought  up  in  confidence,  and  has  not  met  the 
blasting  rebuffs  which  destroy  the  unity  of  love  by  taking 
from  it  one  of  its  truest  outlets. 

Thus  one  might  characterize  even  adults  as  being  the 
possessors  of  the  approaching  glance  or  the  fleeing 
glance.  The  person  with  the  coming  eye  looks*  fre- 
quently into  the  eyes  of  his  companion.  He  does  not 
look,  as  some  do  hastily,  at  them  and  as  hastily  avert 
his  gaze.  Nor  of  course  does  he  stare,  an  act  whose 
symbolism  is  quite  different  at  different  stages  of  spiritual 
development.  The  "  baby  stare  "  is  an  opening  of,  and 
direction  of,  the  eyes  largely  for  the  purpose  of  being 
looked  at.  It  has  been  recorded  of  a  modern  pugilist 
that  his  eyes  by  their  fierceness  frequently  helped  to  quell 
his  adversaries,  and  Caesar,  in  telling  of  the  mutiny 
which  almost  occurred  in  his  army  when  it  was  approach- 
ing the  soldiers  of  Ariovistus,  mentions  the  fact  that  his 
own  men  were  disconcerted  by  the  tales  of  the  traders, 
who  said  that  there  were  few  who  could  stand  up  against 
the  keen  glance  of  the  savages'  eyes. 

In  what  way  the  child  that  is  imperfectly  parented  will 
later  register  in  his  own  love-life  the  rate  or  degree  of 


176    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

his  parentedness  has  been  very  clearly  shown  by  numer- 
ous researches  into  the  unconscious  mentality  of  only 
children  or  favourite  children. 


Influence  of  Parents 

To  the  pre-adolescent  boy  the  father  or  father  sur- 
rogate becomes  the  model  of  what  all  fathers  should  be 
and  indeed  are  in  the  wish-content  of  his  own  uncon- 
cious,  and  upon  his  father's  attitude  toward  the  boy's 
mother  depends  largely  his  own  later  attitude  toward 
his  own  wife.  The  fact  that  parents  think  their  children 
do  not  observe  and  mentally  comment  upon  their  parents' 
actions  leads  the  parents  only  too  late  to  control  them- 
selves in  the  presence  of  their  children.  Thus  if  there 
is  any  reason  why  the  parents  should  repress  any  feeling 
they  have  for  each  other,  such  as  momentary  irritation 
or  chronic  hatred,  they  will  not  do  so  before  an  infant, 
and  only  begin  to  suspect  an  influence  on  the  child  when 
he  begins  to  make  remarks  about  the  parents'  actions 
or  is  noticeably  troubled  by  them. 

To  the  pre-adolescent  boy,  again,  the  mother  or 
mother  surrogate  is  a  model  of  all  a  mother  should  be, 
and  is  the  indelible  prototype  of  what  he  is  unconsciously 
looking  for  in  a  woman  when  later  he  desires  a  mate  of 
his  own.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  the  idea  of  taking 
a  mate  is  not  unconsciously  (though  it  may  be  consciously 
by  his  friends,  when  it  naturally  meets  with  the  resis- 
tance of  the  unwarmed  unconscious)  suggested  to  the 
young  person  until  he  or  she  meets  the  mother  or  father 
replica.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  mother  impres- 
sion on  the  unconscious  is  that  of  a  young  woman  and  not 


INFLUENCE  OF  PARENTS  177 

a  woman  of  the  age  of  the  mother  at  the  time  when  the 
youth  is  inspired  to  take  a  wife. 

It  is  this  indelible,  though  unconscious,  prototype,  still 
existing  in  the  bottom  of  his  heart,  which  causes  him  to 
be  attracted  by  some  girls  more  than  by  others.  If  he 
finds  a  girl  whose  qualities  perfectly  fit  this  unconscious 
maternal  matrix,  which  is  forming  all  his  preferences, 
he  falls  completely  in  love  with  her,  and  gives  expression 
to  this  desire  in  ways  which  characterize  the  other 
mechanisms  of  his  psychic-physical  organism. 

This  is  but  another  way  of  saying  a  boy's  first  love  is 
his  mother.  It  might  be  inferred  from  this  that  a  boy's 
only  love  is  his  mother,  but  this  would  be  true  only  in  the 
sense  that  he  loves  his  wife  as  he  did  his  mother,  or  for 
the  same  qualities  that  he  perceived  in  his  mother.  Here 
it  should  be  noted,  too,  that  this  manner  of  sex  grati- 
fication has  nothing  detrimental  about  it,  unless,  as  is 
frequently  the  case,  it  involves  the  rejection  of  other 
qualities.  Then  the  predominance  of  this  maternal 
image  is  truly  a  misfortune. 

Similarly  a  girl's  first  love  is  her  father.  For  to  the 
pre-adolescent  girl,  not  only  is  her  mother  the  model 
of  all  that  a  mother  should  be  (for  whence  is  she  to 
derive  any  other  models?)  but  her  father  is  the  ideal 
jql£  all  that  a  father  should  be  (at  the  early  age  of  one 
to  five  what  other  can  she  have?)  and  all  her  father's 
actions  are  unconsciously  noted  and  recorded  by  her. 
And  how  can  it  be  otherwise  ?  Have  we  not  later,  even 
in  adulthood,  understood  the  significance  of  what  we 
have  seen  earlier,  and  even  forgotten?  Does  not  the 
significance  of  a  present  fact  depend  upon  and  come,  if 
not  wholly,  at  least  partly,  from  the  unconscious  content 


178    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

of  the  mind  which  perceives  the  fact?  Therefore  to  the 
girl  baby  whose  father  whines  or  scolds  at  her  mother, 
that  type  of  action,  if  repeated  at  any  later  time  by  her 
husband,  will  arouse  in  her  the  same  resentment  which 
she  felt,  and  felt  her  mother  feel,  when  she  was  a  baby. 

If  she  had  a  father  who  was  cheerful  and  unruffled, 
and  later  finds  in  her  husband  a  temper  uncheerful  and 
irritable,  she  will  not  feel  toward  him  the  same  resent- 
ment, because  resentment  is  not  a  p«it  of  her  nature.  It 
was  not  aroused  in  her  infancy  by  the  resentment  of  a 
woman  expressed  against  an  unreasonable  man.  In  the 
place  of  resentment  there  may  occur  surprise  and  an 
immediate  determination  to  learn  and  remove  the  cause, 
neither  of  which  would  occur  to  the  adult  trained  as  a 
child  in  the  expressions  of  ill-feeling.  The  one  child  is 
by  its  environment  habituated  at  the  age  of  one  to  five 
years  to  respond  to  a  situation  in  a  complaining  or  de- 
structive way.  To  the  other  child  that  way  does  not 
occur,  but  only  the  constructive  way. 

And  if,  furthermore,  her  father  was  in  her  infancy  a 
jolly,  unruffled,  positive,  creative  man,  she  will  not  regard 
as  men  others  who  have  not  some  approach  to  these 
qualities.  Unless  they  strike  that  chord  of  robust  and 
cheerful  manliness  which  was  strung  and  struck  in  the 
days  when  she  first  began  to  see  and  hear,  she  will  not 
notice  the  man  as  being  worthy  of  her  attention. 

As  for  the  young  woman,  so  for  the  young  man,  the 
very  quality  which  makes  a  member  of  the  other  sex 
stand  out  as  being  different  from  other  men  and  women, 
making  other  men  and  women  all  alike,  is  that  quality 
or  group  of  qualities  which  distinguished  the  father  or 
mother  and  made  them  so  exceedingly  superior  to  other 


INFLUENCE  OF  PARENTS  179 

persons  in  the  infancy  of  the  young  woman  or  man  in 
question. 

And  just  as  the  girl's  mother  is  her  norm  of  mother-  \  j 
hood,  she  will  expect  to  behave  to  her  own  husband  and 
to  her  own  children,  not  only  consciously  expect  and 
plan,  but  unconsciously  will  behave  in  such  a  way  that  the 
mode  of  her  own  behaviour  is  consistently  and  com- 
pletely determined  by  the  mode  which  has  been  stamped 
on  her  infant  soul  by  the  silent,  unnoted  and  unremem- 
bered,  though  none  the  less  potent,  observation. 

All  this  has  been  mentioned  with  the  purpose  of  try- 
ing to  make  parents  and  educators  realize  in  a  concrete 
way  the  plasticity,  the  consummate  retentiveness  and  the  ' 
essential  permanence  of  the  infant  mentality.  At  its 
most  plastic  age  it  takes  the  fortuitous  impressions  of  its 
environment,  takes  them  very  deeply  and  retains  them 
only  slightly  altered.  If  the  mind  of  the  child  were 
inanimate  plaster,  it  would  do  the  same  thing,  but  being 
animate  plasma  it  does  it  more  effectively. 

So  the  old  maxim,  Maxima  pueris  reverentia  debetur, 
is  to  be  extended  to  include  children  of  the  youngest 
age.  For  the  parent  it  may  seem  almost  ludicrous  that 
he  or  she,  with  all  their  weaknesses,  is  to  be  regarded 
as  occupying  with  respect  to  the  child  the  position  of 
a  god,  who  having  not  merely  procreated  its  body  must 
now  for  at  least  five  years  keep  up  a  continuous  crea- 
tion of  its  mind  and  soul.  It  is  ludicrous  if  not  appall- 
ing that  so  much  power  for  good  or  ill  is  placed  in  the 
hands  and  in  the  very  manners,  actions,  voice,  eye  glance 
and  hand  habit  of  the  parents  and  immediate  human 
surroundings  of  the  child.  In  fine,  there  is  absolutely 
no  circumstance  from  birth  until  five  or  six  years  of 


i8o    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

age  which  can  take  place  within  the  mental  purview 
of  the  child  which  may  not  have  the  effect  of  turning  him 
or  her  in  a  direction  much  desired  or  equally  undesired 
by  the  parents. 

But  lest  it  may  appear  to  some  parents  that  their  con- 
duct, in  the  presence  of  the  child  whose  soul  they  are 
engaged  in  training  after  having  evoked  its  body,  must 
be  punctiliously  regulated  according  to  any  given  set  of 
rules,  it  should  be  emphasized  that  any  kind  of  conduct, 
even  if  it  be  rough,  is  wholesome  enough  if  it  be  animated 
by  the  proper  feelings  of  love  on  the  part  of  the  parents 
and  other  members  of  the  family — love  not  merely  for 
one  person  but  for  as  many  as  possible.  Love  will  dic- 
tate the  natural  and  wholesome  response  to  the  various 
situations. 

It  Is  the  more  evident  that  the  love  of  the  parents  for 
each  other  holds  a  determining  power  over  the  destiny 
of  their  children  when  the  more  modern  psychology 
informs  us  that,  if  perfectly  mated,  a  couple  have  no 
fears,  phobias  nor  anxieties  of  a  disease-producing  kind, 
and  when  we  reflect  that  a  nervous  constitution  on  the 
part  of  one  or  both  parents,  showing  itself  in  fears  or 
anxieties,  will  have  the  deleterious  effect  of  giving,  so 
to  speak,  a  timorous  or  phobic  form  to  the  child's  mind. 
A  fear  of  thunderstorms,  observed  in  a  child  of  a  woman 
also  afraid  of  celestial  pyrotechnics,  is  sometimes  pop- 
ularly explained  on  the  ground  of  its  being  "  inherited." 
Much  that  is  inherited  by  children  is  inherited  not 
by  heredity  but  through  environment.  If  we  Inherit 
money.  It  is  from  a  testator  who  Is  deceased.  If  we 
inherit  traits  of  character,  it  may  be  from  those  of  our 
ancestors  who  are  alive  as  well,  but  truly  inherited  traits 


CREATION  OF  MIND  i8i 

in  this  sense  will  be  inherited  by  us  before  we  are  born 
and  not  after.  On  the  other  hand,  the  traits  which,  by 
a  figure  of  speech,  we  may  call  inherited  from  our  par- 
ents after  we  are  born  are  the  most  constructive  or  de- 
structive inheritances  which  the  child  can  have. 

And  it  should  be  recalled  by  all  parents  that  the  actual 
nervous  constitution,  which  is  determined  for  the  child 
before  the  hour  of  birth,  is  the  inheritance  of  an  infinite 
number  of  ancestors,  all  of  whom  contribute  an  approxi- 
mately equal  part.  No  praise  or  blame  can  be  attached 
to  the  parents  for  any  mental  trait  the  child  is  possessed 
of  at  birth.  His  body  and  his  nervous  constitution  are 
the  inevitable  effect  of  causes  operating  from  the 
beginning  of  evolution.*  But  the  child's  body  having 
been  delivered,  a  responsibility  at  once  rests  upon  the 
parents  of  producing,  as  far  as  in  them  lies,  a  whole- 
some mental  spiritual  environment  which  is  to  create  the 
mind  of  the  child. 

Creation  of  Mind 

The  mind  of  the  newborn  infant  is  less  in  evidence 
than  that  of  the  day-old  chick.  It  seems  as  if  nature, 
in  the  case  of  humans,  had  intended  to  use,  as  a  means  of 
producing  in  them  a  conscious  rational  mentality,  a 
period  of  utter  helplessness,  in  which  the  actions  upon 
the  outside  world  should  be  of  absolutely  no  effect,  or 
of  no  significant  effect,  and  the  human  chick,  instead  of 
beginning  to  peck  and  scratch,  should  be  held  by  the 

*  Only  the  most  modern  of  obstetricians  introduce  into  this  matter  any 
question  of  praise  or  blame,  when  they  advise,  for  an  expectant  mother, 
a  diet  which  is  designed  to  make  the  unborn  smaller  than  it  would  have 
been  had  the  mother's  nutritional  instincts  been  followed. 


i82    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

force  of  its  own  weight  in  a  position  in  which  it  should 
be,  more  than  all  other  animals,  assailed  by,  and  prac- 
tically at  the  mercy  of,  outside  influences,  which  may 
greatly  alter  its  always  variable  efficiency. 

All  young  animals  except  the  highest  mammalia  begin 
to  shift  for  themselves  comparatively  soon.  The  inac- 
tivity and  receptivity  of  the  human  infant  make  it  more 
subject  than  any  other  animal  to  the  influence  of  the 
group  and  less  to  that  of  the  heredity,  i.e.  innate  con- 
stitution. If  we  should  call  the  innately  inherited 
qualities  "  vertical "  influences,  because  they  come  down 
from  generation  to  generation,  we  might  call  the  influ- 
ences which  are  exerted  by  the  environment  "  horizontal  " 
influences.  Then  we  should  be  able  to  express  the  whole 
matter  very  well  by  saying  that  with  the  "  vertical  " 
influences  the  parents  have  almost  nothing  at  all  to 
do,  but  with  the  "  horizontal  "  influences  they  not  only 
have  a  great  deal  to  do,  but  they  begin  to  have  it  as 
soon  as  the  child  is  born,  they  have  to  have  it,  whether 
they  want  it  or  not,  and  that  their  responsibility  for 
their  child's  welfare  is  not  only  instantaneous  but  contin- 
uous and  comprehensive,  up  to  the  time  when  it  is  no 
longer  possible  or  desirable  for  the  parents  to  be  the 
sole  environment  of  the  child.  Then  other  factors  enter, 
which  do  not  and  ought  not  to  belong  to  the  parents. 
Then  the  child  has  to  begin  its  relations  with  the  com- 
munity and  the  state,  in  order  that  its  life  shall  not 
remain  forever  at  the  narrow  calibre  of  the  family. 

Too  much  emphasis  cannot  be  laid  upon  the  good  or 
evil  effect  exercised  upon  the  whole  subsequent  lifetime 
of  the  child  by  the  sunny  or  the  "  shady  "  character  of 
the  love  influences  with  which  it  is  surrounded  in  the 


CREATION  OF  MIND  183 

earliest  days.  The  greatest  obstacle  to  the  development 
of  a  strong  wholesome  character  is  the  complex;  and 
the  emotion  of  fear  which  is  the  rejult  of  a  feeling  of 
inferiority  is  the  greatest  single  factor  in  forming  com- 
plexes. The  wholesome  and  sunny  temperament  so 
productive  of  health,  happiness  and  prosperity,  which 
more  than  anything  else  annihilates  wrong  and  misfor- 
tune, Is  not  the  result  of  a  perfectly  healthy  body  alone. 
It  is  primarily  the  result  of  a  point  of  view,  an  attitude, 
a  disposition,  an  early  fixed  impression  for  which  par- 
ents exist  and  for  which  they  are  responsible.  Children 
who  are  physically  perfectly  healthy  frequently  lack  this 
proper  attitude  towards  the  world,  and  sometimes  even 
a  crippled  or  blind  child,  thanks  to  loving  care, 
has  it. 

To  the  shady  nature  of  the  love  influences  emanating 
from  the  parents  may  be  attributed  their  deleterious 
influences  for  the  following  reasons.  The  fundamental 
fear,  that  which  produces  a  feeling  of  inferiority  always 
avoided  by  the  unconscious  of  every  man,  woman  or 
child,  is  a  sexual  fear,  a  fear  either  of  impotence  or 
sexual  inferiority,  i.e.  unattractiveness.  Due  to  our 
utterly  senseless  education,  a  great  many  perfectly 
normal  persons  know  little  of  sexual  norms  and  fancy 
they  have  violated  some  natural  sexual  law,  and  of  course 
fear  the  consequences  of  that  trespass.  As  their  knowl- 
edge is  indefinite  and  inaccurate,  they  fear  an  indefinite 
peril.  And  as  the  indefinite  always  looks  big,  they 
exaggerate  the  supposed  effects  of  their  transgression 
sometimes  to  the  degree  of  becoming  despondent  over 
thinking  they  have  committed  the  "  unpardonable  sin." 

The  sexual  relations  of  most  parents  are  such  that 


1 84    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

they  have  been  trained  to  shroud  them  in  the  blackest 
obscurity.  Many  a  man  has  had  his  married  life  ruined 
by  thinking  that  his  mother  was  so  pure  that  she  could 
not  have  a  passionate  love  for  his  father,  and  that  no 
pure  woman  like  her,  as  he  picked  out  his  wife  to  be, 
could  be  passionately  attached  to  him.  Therefore  he  has 
thought  it  out  for  himself,  and  quite  logically  deduced 
his  erroneous  conclusions  from  false  premises,  namely 
that,  as  for  passionate  love,  he  had  either  to  give  it  up 
entirely  or  go  to  prostitutes  for  it,  in  whom  there  can  be 
passion  but  not  love.  Many  a  woman  too  has  been 
brought  up  under  a  training  which  taught  her  to  believe 
that  to  feel  any  passionate  love  for  any  man,  even  her 
own  husband,  was  wrong  and  sinful;  therefore  she  re- 
pressed it  all  and  took  her  husband's  advances  coldly  with 
the  idea  that  if  she  responded  warmly  she  would  be  to  him 
as  a  prostitute  and  he  would  neither  admire  her  nor 
treat  her  well,  and  she  would  be  committing  a  great  sin 
to  love  her  husband  passionately  as  (she  imagines)  the 
prostitutes  do.  And  both  parents,  having  this  guilty 
feeling,  he  that  he  should  not  expect  his  wife  to  match 
him  in  ardour,  and  she  in  the  unfortunate  misapprehen- 
sion that  only  prostitutes  can  eat  the  true  apple  of  love, 
have  both  suffered  alike  from  their  lack  of  sex  education, 
and  they  pass  this  on  to  their  children. 

The  Child's  Sexual  Curiosity 

The  child's  first  conscious  thought  about  itself  Is 
where  it  comes  from.  As  both  parents  are  ashamed  of 
their  marital  relations,  for  no  matter  how  hard  the  con- 
scious life  tries  to  repress,  the  unconscious  goes  on  the 


THE  CHILD'S  SEXUAL  CURIOSITY      185 

plan  of  "  all  or  nothing,"  and  each  parent,  when  con- 
fronted by  the  sweet  innocence  of  a  child  just  beginning 
to  think,  shrinks  from  trying  to  impart  any  of  the 
secrets  of  adult  love  to  an  infant  who  evidently  cannot 
understand. 

Suppose  a  three-year-old  child  says,  "  Mommy,  where'd 
I  come  from?"  it  will  take  a  particularly  pure  and  whole- 
some mind  and  one  free  from  fear  and  ignorance  to 
reply,  in  a  tone  quite  as  bright  and  fresh  as  little  Billie's, 
"  You  came  out  of  me,  honey."  Then  imagine  the 
difficulty  on  the  part  of  most  mothers  in  carrying  on 
their  end  of  the  following  conversation: 

B.    Where  did  I  come  out? 

M.    A  part  of  me  opened  and  you  came  out  head  first. 

B.    How  could  I  do  that  'thout  hurtin'  you? 

M.    You  didn't.     It  hurt  very  much. 

B.    Does  it  hurt  now? 

M.    No,  not  a  bit. 

B.    Gee,  I  must  have  made  a  big  hole ! 

M.  No,  you  were  quite  small,  about  as  big  as  Mrs. 
Smith's  baby  over  on  the  Boulevard. 

B.    How  big  was  I?    Show  me. 

M.  You  were  about  so  long  and  so  big  around,  about 
the  size  of  sister's  doll. 

B.    How  did  I  ever  get  in  there? 

M.  You  grew  in  there  from  as  big  as  the  point  of  a 
pin. 

B.  Mow  could  I  breathe  inside  of  you  and  eat,  'n' 
everthin'  ? 

M.    I  did  it  for  you. 

B.    How  long  was  I  in  there  ? 


1 86    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

M.  Nine  months;  about  as  long  a  time  as  from  last 
Christmas  until  now. 

B.  Gee,  what  a  long  time!  Say,  Mommy,  did  you 
put  me  there  or  did  I  just  grow  like  an  apple  ? 

M.  Everything  like  an  apple  or  an  animal  grows 
from  the  melting  together  of  two  little  seed  like  things 
called  cells.  One  comes  from  the  father,  the  other  is 
in  the  mother.    They  are  exactly  alike  and  equal. 

Those  who  could  carry  their  end  of  the  conversation 
up  to  this  point  generally  break  down  here.  But  this  is 
as  far  as,  or  farther  than,  the  very  young  child  pursues 
this  inquiry.  In  all  probability  the  last  question  would 
not  be  asked,  for  it  is  found  that  the  amount  of  infor- 
mation given  here  is  completely  satisfactory  for  a  long 
time.  The  important  point  is,  however,  that  the  child 
should  be  given  as  much  information  as  he  asks  for,  but 
no  more.  In  the  beginning  the  child  has  the  utmost 
confidence  in  the  parents,  from  whom  he  receives  all 
physical  comforts  and  necessities.  His  absolute  faith 
makes  him  very  jealous  of  anything  that  looks  like  a 
lack  of  confidence  on  the  part  of  the  parent.  He  is  likely 
to  resent  any  lack  of  sincerity  on  the  parents'  part  in 
proportion  as  his  confidence  in  them  has  been  perfect. 
The  least  flaw  spoils  all  for  him,  and  particularly  in  mat- 
ters which  he  instinctively  feels  are  most  vital  to  him. 

I  repeat  that  the  parents'  unwillingness  frankly  to 
state  to  their  children  the  truth  about  their  sexual  origin 
is  caused  by  the  parents'  own  shame  in  feeling  that  in 
some  way  passionate  love  is  sinful  and  is  therefore  to 
be  kept  concealed  from  children  who  can  talk.  Possibly 
it  is  because  the  parents  fear  that  the  children  will  say 


EFFECTS  OF  MISINFORMATION        187 

something  about  it  before  strangers.  But  most  likely 
it  is  from  a  feeling  of  reluctance  to  confess  before  the 
so-called  innocence  of  youth  what  they  themselves 
erroneously  believe  to  be  wrong. 

And  I  repeat  also  that  much  harm  comes  to  children 
both  from  the  parents'  carelessness  about  their  conduct 
in  the  presence  of  children  before  they  can  talk,  and  their 
mendacity  after  that  time.  Unsatisfied  sexual  curiosity 
leads  the  children,  on  the  other  hand,  to  invent  all  sorts 
of  grotesque  theories  of  conception  and  birth,  and  to 
listen  to  other  children  who  are  variously  misinformed. 
Many  of  these  birth  and  conception  theories  are  found 
by  medical  psychologists  as  nuclei  of  various  phobias 
and  other  forms  of  neurosis.  The  untruthful  statements 
of  parents  when  they  either  say  they  do  not  know  or 
repeat  the  time-worn  myth  of  babies  being  brought  by 
the  doctor,  have  the  further  result  of  destroying  once 
and  for  all  the  confidence  which  the  child  has  up  to  this 
time  had  in  the  reliability  of  his  parents.  As  the  de- 
struction of  this  confidence  amounts  to  the  destruction  of 
every  kind  of  confidence  in  themselves  as  well  as  in  every 
other  person  or  thing,  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance 
for  parents  so  to  school  themselves  that  they  can  keep 
their  hold  upon  their  children,  at  least  a  little  beyond  the 
time  of  their  first  sex  inquiry.  The  child,  instead  of 
being  fully  parented,  is  thus  in  a  sense  spiritually 
orphaned,  and  at  a  very  early  age. 

The  Effects  of  Misinformation 

The  fundamental  basis  for  a  wholesome  interest  in  all 
things  which  is  the  foundation  of  a  sound  education  in 


i88    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

any  line  lies  in  the  undoubting  knowledge  on  every  child's 
part  as  to  how,  when  and  where  he  himself  originated. 
Lacking  this  he  is  likely  to  doubt  all  things  and,  not 
seeing  clearly  and  straight  these  fundamental  facts,  he 
is  prone  to  look  at  everything  with  an  intellectual 
strabism. 

If  a  teacher  does  not  receive  the  child  well  oriented 
in  these  basic  truths  it  is  impossible  to  prevent  many 
children  becoming  indifferent  or  perverse  in  their  attitude 
toward  their  school  work.  All  the  troublesome  phenom- 
ena of  adolescence  would  be  mitigated  if  the  secondary 
schools  could  receive  children  who  had  been  straightened 
out  on  matters  of  sex,  but  this  will  be  impossible  until 
parents  themselves  have  succeeded  in  looking  at  the 
matter  with  an  "  approaching  "  glance  instead  of  with 
the  "  fleeing  "  one. 

Directed  vs.  Undirected  Thinking 

The  striking  difference  existing  between  the  atmos- 
phere of  a  schoolroom  where  there  are  pupils  of  a  higher 
grade  and  that  where  lower-grade  pupils  are  confined, 
is  that  the  older  pupils  are  quieter.  They  talk  less  and 
they  move  less.  The  younger  the  pupils  the  greater  is 
the  instinctive  impulse  to  move  some  part  of  the  body 
including  the  vocal  apparatus,  all  the  time.  It  may  be 
said  that  the  foremost  aim  ot  all  education  is  to  trans- 
mute the  young  person's  primal  urge  to  keep  moving 
physically  into  a  craving  to  be  active  mentally.  The 
first  is  instinctive  and  the  second  has  to  be  acquired  at 
great  pains.  This  aim  of  changing  activities  from  phys- 
ical, which  are  natural,  to  the  directed  mental  activities, 


DIRECTED  VS.  UNDIRECTED  THINKING    189 

which  are  not  natural,  implies  that  it  is  a  desirable  aim. 
Everything  that  man  has  done,  he  has  done  because  he 
has  wished  or  desired  it.  As  a  whole,  mankind  has 
considered  desirable  the  transformation  of  energy  from 
physical  into  mental.  The  basis  of  this  desire  is  the 
greater  mobility  and  versatility  of  mental  over  physical 
powers.  Physical  powers  are  exceedingly  limited, 
limited  in  fact  to  the  use  of  a  comparatively  few  muscles, 
while  mental  powers  are  unlimited.  It  is  as  if  a  small 
amount  of  iron  physical  power  could  by  the  alchemy  of 
education  be  transmuted  into  an  enormous  amount  of 
golden  mental  power,  and  the  feeling  of  superiority  of 
the  individual  in  whom  this  transmutation  takes  place  is 
very  gratifying  to  him,  enabling  him  to  overcome  his 
fellows,  and  therein  satisfying  one  of  his  fundamental 
cravings. 

The  craving  to  be  active  mentally  is  instinctive  only  in 
that  sphere  of  thinking  which  is  called  undirected  think- 
ing or  day-dreaming.  That  is  a  variety  of  mental  activity 
which,  however,  is  quite  unconcerned  with  any  positive 
effect  upon  external  reality.  A  child  or  an  adult  will 
day-dream  for  hours,  with  no  present  and  no  future 
result,  except  that  in  a  very  small  minority  of  cases  an 
adult  will  dream  constructively,  will  think  out  a  plan  of 
action  or  the  plot  of  a  story,  and  later  the  action  will  be 
carried  out  or  the  story  will  be  written.  Generally,  how- 
ever, day-dreaming  is  the  only  actual  fulfilment  of  the 
unconscious  wishes  which  are  the  really  instinctive  men- 
tal activity.  Its  essential  characteristic  is  its  practical 
futility,  and  the  gradual  change  which  it  produces  on  the 
day-dreamer,  making  him  less  and  less  interested  in 
real  life  and  more  and  more  centred  upon  himself,  his 


I90    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

mental  eye  being  turned  in  towards  his  own  thoughts 
and  away  from  real  things.  An  excessive  introversion 
of  this  kind  is  seen  in  the  form  of  insanity  known  as 
dementia  praecox. 

The  motives  for  a  change  from  the  instinctive  day- 
dreaming, which  is  natural,  to  what  is  apparently  un- 
natural have  to  be  kept  clearly  in  view,  or  the  whole 
educational  procedure  seems  at  once  irrational.  The 
main  motive  for  the  transfer  from  physical  to  mental 
activity,  and  from  the  undirected  to  a  directed  form  of 
thinking,  is  really  a  better  adjustment  of  the  physical 
activity  and  not,  as  many  have  seemed  to  think,  the 
reduction  in  amount  or  complete  abolition  of  physical 
activity.  We  are  primarily  physical  as  well  as  mental, 
and  the  only  real  gain  to  civilization  by  means  of  mental 
improvement  is  an  improvement  of  the  physical  con- 
dition. 

The  Physical  Child 

Now,  the  physical  condition  of  the  child  is  not  a 
thing  apart  from  his  mental  condition;  it  is  not  a  sepa- 
rate thing  which  can  be  specially  trained  quite  without 
regard  to  the  mental  state.  If  that  were  so,  children 
could  be  put  into  mechanical  exercisers,  and  their  nat- 
ural resistance  would,  in  a  reasonable  time,  produce  a 
result  of  muscular  physique  which  would  delight  the  soul 
of  the  most  materialistic  trainer  whose  photographs  of 
gnarly  backs  and  lumpy  arms  one  occasionally  sees  in 
shop  windows  and  magazine  advertisements.  Extreme 
muscular  strength  is  an  attainable,  but  is  not  a  desirable, 
aim.  So  a  mild  amount  of  mentality  is  injected  into  the 
physical  training  in  the  schools  in  the  shape  of  games, 


THE  PHYSICAL  CHILD  191 

dances,  etc.  And  into  the  English  study  there  is  also  in- 
jected a  small  amount  of  physical  training  in  the  shape 
of  declamation  and  dramatics. 

But  this  is  practically  all.  Nor  would  it  be  possible  to 
combine  Latin  and  physical  training  or  any  other  sub- 
ject called  cultural  with  physical  training  in  the  modes 
in  which  they  appear  in  the  school  curriculum.  The 
combination  of  physical  and  mental  in  the  cultural  sub- 
jects is  there  nevertheless,  but  in  a  much  more  subtle 
and  elusive  state ;  for  the  connection  between  the  cultural 
subjects  and  the  physical  condition  of  the  pupil  is 
mediated  solely  by  the  unconscious,  about  which  prac- 
tically nothing  is  known  by  the  average  teacher. 

It  is  quite  common  for  the  interest  which  is  displayed 
by  a  child  in  a  subject  such  as  arithmetic  to  be  the  out- 
ward manifestation  of  a  real  though  unconscious  interest 
in  the  teacher.  It  would  seem  that  this  is  not  only  pos- 
sible but  probable  in  all  cases  even  where,  as  it  is  in  some, 
the  interest  in  the  teacher  is  not  consciously  known.  We 
do  hear  pupils  say  they  like  a  study  because  they  like  the 
teacher  of  it.  And  we  are  all  well  acquainted  with  the 
pupils  who  cannot  make  head  or  tail  out  of  a  subject 
because  the  teacher  is  inferior.  It  would  seem  that  a 
personally  attractive  teacher  could  arouse  enthusiasm  in 
a  student  for  any  subject  whatever,  whether  or  not  the 
teacher  knew  anything  about  it  at  all. 

The  Unconscious  Wish  as  a  Tension 

The  aspect  of  the  unconscious  which  influences  the 
physical  health  of  the  pupil,  as  well  as  his  mental  health, 
is  the  unconscious  wish.    It  has  been  shown  by  the  newer 


192    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

psychology  that  the  unconscious  wish  is  a  tension  which 
is  expressed  only  through  the  muscles,  not  only  the  larger 
and  more  familiar  ones  but  also  the  very  small  ones  of 
which  we  are  never  conscious.  These  small  ones  contract 
and  expand  with  the  result  of  enlarging  and  diminishing 
the  calibre  of  the  passages  in  the  body  through  which 
go  air,  food,  blood  and  various  other  fluids,  and  there- 
fore govern  the  development  of  those  parts  of  the  phy- 
sical organism  which  are  supplied  by  the  various  chemical 
products  of  food,  air  and  water. 

These  wishes  or  tensions  or  infinitesimal  inceptive 
movements  of  the  muscles  are  at  once  too  small  to  enter 
our  conscious  life  and  yet  so  numerous  and  so  powerful 
as  to  influence  it  greatly,  though  in  ways  that  appear  to 
be  extremely  indirect.  They  are,  in  their  gross  effects, 
distantly  comparable  with  the  rising  or  falling  of  the 
tide  in  a  river  which  lifts  a  vessel  alongside  of  a  wharf, 
imperceptible  to  the  eye  while  the  eye  has  the  patience 
to  keep  looking,  and  yet  causing  a  change  which  is  notice- 
able from  time  to  time  as  one  observes  the  height  of  the 
vessel  against  the  wharf. 

The  wishes  or  tensions  which  exist  unconsciously  in 
the  mind  of  every  child  when  confronted  with  a  school 
task  of  any  nature  whatsoever  correspond,  in  this  com- 
parison, to  the  limitless  force  of  the  uplift  of  the  water 
on  the  hull  of  the  vessel,  and  the  conscious  attitude  of  the 
child  corresponds  to  the  physical  effort  which  a  boy  or 
a  girl  might  exert  to  oppose  or  assist  in  the  upward 
movement  of  the  boat  on  a  rising  tide.  The  effect  on 
the  boat  is  virtually  nothing,  while  the  effect  on  the  boy 
or  girl  is  directly  in  proportion  to  the  effort  put 
forth.     Very  wise  are  they  if  they  cease  exerting  them- 


UNCONSCIOUS  WISH  AS  A  TENSION     193 

selves  as  soon  as  they  have  stirred  up  a  vigorous  cir- 
culation. 

And  yet,  some  of  the  tasks  assigned  in  school  work 
are,  if  taken  too  seriously — that  is,  literally, — as  hope- 
less as  a  single  child's  attempt  to  lift  a  thousand-ton 
vessel,  or  push  it  down  into  the  water.  The  tasks, 
hopeless  as  they  are,  continue  to  be  set,  however,  by 
teachers  and  devisers  of  curricula,  and  the  inevitable 
result  follows.  Is  anything  except  mental  gymnastics 
accomplished,  even  though  a  full-rigged  ship  is  put  in  the 
place  of  a  dumb-bell?  It  is  much  as  if  one  encouraged 
a  pupil  to  make  believe  he  was  lifting  the  heavier  weight, 
and  gaining  much  glory  from  the  fancied  accomplish- 
ment, just  because  it  is  enormous.  Of  course,  if  they 
really  could  lift  such  a  weight,  they  would  be  wonders. 
But  we  know  they  cannot,  and  they  know  they  cannot, 
and  so  we  practise  them  in  the  art  of  deceiving  them- 
selves and  trying  to  deceive  us. 

It  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  qualitative  uncongeniality. 
The  intellectual  feats  necessary  to  accomplish  the 
mentally  impossible  they  would  gladly,  many  of  them, 
perform,  just  as  feats,  to  show  power,  but  they  soon 
realize  the  impossibility  of  doing  them  well,  even  when 
they  pass  examinations  at  95%  and  100%.  What 
must  be  the  real  candid  feeling  of  the  graduate  who  has 
received  above  90%  on  a  paper  in  any  subject?  Not 
that  the  mark  is  a  mark  applicable  to  the  subject,  but 
that  it  is  applicable  to  the  person,  who  is,  in  truth,  most 
inadequate  to  give  a  90%  account  of  the  subject. 

What,  then,  would  be  the  result  of  giving  to  the  pupils 
in  secondary  schools,  or  to  the  students  in  colleges,  tasks 
that  are  commensurate  with  their  comparatively  slight 


194    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

abilities?  The  pride  of  the  adults  who  are  superintend- 
ing the  education  of  the  adolescents  would  be  severely 
hurt.  To  please  our  own  fancy,  to  tickle  our  own 
imaginations,  we  pretend  that  the  young  people  can 
handle  Shakespeare,  or  Vergil,  or  chemistry  or  history 
or  philosophy.  And  they,  in  their  turn,  are  brought  up 
to  practise  the  same  deception  on  their  children  when 
they  come  along  and  have  to  be  educated. 

Now,  in  all  this  hypocrisy  the  wishes  for  real  accom- 
plishment, the  tensions  or  inceptive  movements  in  the 
direction  of  attaining  ends  really  and  not  imaginatively 
attainable,  are  bound  to  be  frustrated.  The  young  would 
really  like  to  do  what  they  can  to  help  along  civilization 
and  well-being  of  every  kind.  For  the  unconscious  wish 
is  always  a  wish  for  power  and  for  life.  And  when  the 
conscious  mind  of  the  person  being  educated  in  schools 
is  faced  with  a  task  which,  if  taken  literally,  is  impossible, 
only  the  child-power  of  the  conscious  life  is  really 
enlisted,  and  not  the  race-power  of  the  unconscious.  In 
all  this  fruitless  struggle,  the  unconscious,  which  is  com- 
parable to  a  different  personality  residing  in  the  same 
body  as  the  conscious  personality,  is  perfectly  aware  of 
the  futility  of  the  efforts  which  are  being  put  forth  by  the 
consciousness,  and  does  not  share  In  them,  for  it  must  by 
nature  strive  for  results  which  are  the  resolutions  of  the 
tensions  making  up  its  essence. 

The  unconscious  is  one  continued  wish  or  tension  or 
bundle  of  tensions.  These  tensions  are  relaxed  or 
resolved  naturally  from  time  to  time  in  the  act  of  creat- 
ing or  the  act  of  eating.  I  use  the  word  creating  instead 
of  reproduction,  for  the  reason  that  the  two  main  forms 
of  the  desire  perpetuation  are  the  perpetuation  of  self, 


UNCONSCIOUS  WISH  AS  A  TENSION     195 

and,  as  a  variety  of  self-perpetuation,  that  of  the  race. 
Now,  the  race-perpetuating  instinct,  like  all  instincts 
springing  from  it,  is  transmutable.  It  may  be  transmuted 
from  one  kind  of  creation  to  another.  This  transfor- 
mation of  the  creative  instinct  from  physical  reproduc- 
tion of  species  to  production  or  creation  of  other  things, 
which  has  always  been  spoken  of  as  higher,  is  called  by 
the  aspiring  name  of  sublimation.  And  it  is  really  higher 
from  the  point  of  view  of  personal  power  and  accom- 
plishment. For  the  difficulties  overcome  in  accomplishing 
it,  which  measure  the  value  of  it  as  a  conscious  produc- 
tion, are  much  greater  than  in  the  reproduction  of  kind, 
in  which  one  acts  spontaneously,  without  resistance  and 
without  sense  of  personal  achievement  or  with  only  an 
illusory  one.  What  nature  causes  and  completes  is  so 
separate  from  the  Ego,  that  opposes  and  overcomes 
that  nature  in  us,  that  our  overcoming  it  seems  much 
more  our  own  doing  than  anything  in  which  nature 
wholly  concurs.  Thus  it  is  evident  that  the  accomplish- 
ment most  gratifying  to  the  individual  consciousness  is 
that  which  most  overcomes,  masters  or  controls  the 
instinctive  and  unconscious  tendencies.  In  yielding  to 
and  falling  in  with  the  instincts,  which  are  absolutely 
common  and  universal,  we  are  not  developing  that 
power  which  most  typifies  our  existence  as  individuals. 
In  doing  the  most  common  things  we  are  surrendering 
our  separateness  as  individuals  and  sinking  ourselves 
into  a  larger  organism — the  race. 


196    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 
Reproductive  vs.  Productive  Creation 

The  primal  urge  or  generic  expression  of  vitality 
which  keeps  alive  the  living  things  on  earth  shows  itself 
in  mankind  as  the  driving  force  which  prolongs  the 
individual  life  and  propagates  the  species.  This  purely 
propagative  desire  I  will  call  desire  for  reproductive 
creation,  and  distinguish  it  from  its  more  refined  form 
which  might  be  called  productive  creation.  Whenever 
the  craving  to  create,  which  is  the  fundamental  one  in  all 
humanity,  is  raised  by  any  circumstances  whatever  into 
an  urge  to  create  not  the  reduplication  of  the  self  in 
other  individuals,  offspring  (which  I  call  reproductive 
creation  because  it  merely  repeats  units  like  those  which 
already  exist),  but  to  create  something  new  in  the  world 
by  the  manipulation  of  real  things  already  existent  into 
a  new  production  which  never  existed  before,  such  as  a 
house  or  a  book  or  a  picture,  I  would  call  this  latter 
kind  of  creation  productive.  Education  is  aimed  solely 
at  productive  creation,  though  it  is  unfortunately  true 
that  instinct  alone  is  not  enough  properly  to  direct  the 
other  kind.  Left  undirected,  reproductive  creation  is, 
in  the  majority  of  cases,  the  cause  of  much  misery  which 
education  in  the  distant  future  will,  I  am  sure,  con- 
tribute much  to  remove  from  the  world. 

Every  idea  which  occurs  to  us  is  a  manifestation  of 
the  unconscious  wish  for  creation,  whether  it  be  that 
continued  creation  of  self  which  is  otherwise  called  self- 
preservation,  or  that  intermittent  creation  of  other 
personalities  called  reproduction.  There  is  no  idea  that 
is  not  originally  caused  to  come  into  consciousness  by 
that  primal  urge.    This  seems  a  very  extraordinary  state- 


THOUGHTS  OR  ACTIONS  197 

merit  when  we  apply  it  to  the  idle  fancies  or  chance 
associations  which  occasionally  come  into  our  heads. 
Why,  when  I  am  writing  these  words,  does  a  picture 
suddenly  flash  before  my  mental  eye,  a  picture  of  a  piece 
of  road  in  Vermont  over  which  I  drove  two  summers 
ago?  I  do  not  know  positively,  and  could  not  be  sure 
unless  I  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  studying  other  idle 
and  apparently  chance  and  trivial  associations  which 
might  occur  to  me  during  the  three  or  four  hours  which 
I  might  devote  to  the  investigation  this  evening.  Why, 
when  I  am  reading  Sully's  "  Pessimism,"  do  I  get  another 
mental  picture,  extremely  vivid,  of  a  convivial  scene 
under  the  trees,  with  tables  and  a  luncheon  served  on 
them  and  a  group  of  people  having  a  jolly  time  ?  I  sur- 
mise in  this  case  that  the  tenor  of  the  pessimism  book 
evoked  in  me  an  opposing  wish  to  be  optimistic,  and  that 
this  wish  took  the  form  of  a  banquet  in  an  orchard,  a 
bright  visualization,  which  was  the  only  medium  then 
available  for  the  unconscious  to  express  a  wish  which 
might  be  put  in  the  words:  "  I  wish  I  were  feasting  on 
real  food  instead  of  purely  mental  pabulum,  on  delicious 
viands  instead  of  on  dry  philosophic  bones,  and  with  a 
company  of  jolly  people  instead  of  alone,  in  the  open 
air  at  noon  instead  of  in  a  stuffy  room  at  midnight." 

Occurrence  of  Thoughts  or  Actions 

An  exceedingly  important  fact  to  realize  is  that  every 
slightest  thought  coming  into  anyone's  head  is,  so  to 
speak,  the  visible  form  of  the  primal  urge  which  has 
caused  him  to  be  here  and  alive  today  and  has  caused 
the  existence  of  every  living  thing  that  has  ever  come 


198     THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

into  being.  It  seems  to  be  exceedingly  important  both 
for  his  present  and  his  future  and  important  in  its  bearing 
upon  education. 

In  the  first  place  its  enormous  importance  in  education 
lies  in  the  fact  that  it  clears  up  a  great  many  doubtful 
points  as  to  the  applicability  of  different  types  of  educa- 
tion, technical,  cultural,  etc.,  as  to  the  actual  methods  of 
presentation  to  the  pupil  and  as  to  the  relation  existing 
between  pupil  and  teacher.  It  explains  much  more 
clearly  the  necessity  for  the  teacher  and  the  teacher's 
work,  and  accounts  for  much  of  the  strained  relation 
which  exists  between  teacher  and  student.  Not  only 
every  slightest  and  most  trivial  idea  which  occurs  either 
to  student  or  teacher,  but  every  littlest  act  of  either  of 
them,  is  causally  connected  with  their  own  unconscious 
wishes  for  creativeness.  The  string  of  intermediate 
causes  between  a  disorderly  pupil's  unconscious  desire 
to  accomplish,  in  the  world,  work  of  a  concrete  effectual- 
ness  and  his  disorderly  conduct  in  breaking  a  piece  of 
furniture,  losing  or  destroying  a  book,  or  diverting  the 
attention  of  the  entire  classroom  to  himself  by  means  of 
some  exhibitionistic  act — the  string  of  intermediate 
causes  between  the  individual  pupil's  disorder  and  the 
cosmic  order  which  actuates  his  unconscious  desires,  is 
sometimes  very  long  and  complicated.  It  is  in  every 
strand's  length  connected  by  his  reasoning  faculty  with 
his  relations  to  fellow-student  and  teacher — a  causal 
connection  which  has  never,  I  believe,  been  taken  into 
consideration  in  planning  any  educational  work,  for  the 
reason  that  never  until  the  present  time  has  it  been 
recognized. 

Up  to  the  present  time  the  association  of  ideas  ^as  been 


THOUGHTS  OR  ACTIONS  199 

regarded  as  a  chance  affair,  a  purely  accidental  matter, 
for  which  no  laws  could  be  discovered.  Similarly  the 
restless  actions,  apparently  aimless,  the  multitudinous 
blunders,  omissions  and  mistakes  committed  in  school  or 
college  work  have  up  to  date  been  regarded  as  accidents. 
But  just  as  the  word  "accident"  (coming  from  two 
Latin  words  meaning  "  a  falling  toward,"  of  one  body 
in  the  direction  of  another)  from  a  modern  scientific 
viewpoint  implies  an  attraction  exerted  by  the  one  body 
upon  the  other,  so  in  modern  psychology  we  must  suppose 
the  existence  of  a  force  determining  the  occurrence  of  an 
idea,  of  an  idea  to  do  a  thing  and  just  as  much  the 
existence  of  a  force  causing  an  action  which  is  not 
accompanied  by  an  idea  (a  so-called  automatic  action) 
as  so  many  actions  are,  both  of  adults  and  children. 

I  say  an  action  not  accompanied  by  an  idea.  Of 
course  I  mean  an  action  not  accompanied  by  an  idea  of 
which  we  are  conscious.  The  idea  may  nevertheless  be 
in  the  unconscious,  a  notion  which  is  the  newer  psychol- 
ogy's contribution  to  the  theory  of  education.  And  just 
as  I  have  occasion  to  say  elsewhere  that  every  emotion 
is  connected  with  an  idea,  so  here  I  say  that  every  act 
is  connected  with  a  thought,  although  that  thought  may 
or  may  not  be  in  consciousness  at  the  time.  We  rightly 
speak  of  thoughtless  acts,  if  we  mean  that  such  acts  are 
not,  at  manifestation,  accompanied  by  the  appropriate 
conscious  thoughts.  But  on  careful  consideration  it  is 
quite  evident  that  an  action  is  but  the  outward  manifes- 
tation of  a  thought,  sometimes  a  thought  which  has 
crossed  the  threshold  from  the  unconscious  into  con- 
sciousness, but  often  a  thought  which  remains  in  the 
unconscious.     The  expression  '*  thoughtless  acts,"  then, 


200    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

fitly  represents  this  condition,  which  is  a  very  striking 
one,  and  seems  at  first  sight  very  extraordinary  if  not 
impossible.  But  what  is  a  thoughtless  act  if  not  an  act 
which  has  been  caused  by  a  thought  that  does  not  exist 
in  consciousness,  to  be  sure,  but  does  exist  in  the  uncon- 
scious part  of  the  personality  of  the  thoughtless  actor? 

Thoughtless  Acts 

So  we  should  be  very  careful  to  keep  clear  the  true 
implication  of  the  thoughtless  acts  of  children  or  adults. 
Very  frequently  both  act  thoughtlessly,  but  the  thought- 
lessness is  only  in  the  comparatively  narrow  sphere  of 
consciousness.  The  thought  itself  which  gave  form  to 
the  act  yet  lives,  but  it  lives  and  moves  and  has  its  being 
in  that  illimitable  world  of  the  unconscious;  the  thought 
causing  your  thoughtless  act  lives  in  your  unconscious, 
and  the  thought  CcLusing  my  thoughtless  act  lives 
in  my  unconscious,  and  so  on  for  every  person  in  the 
world. 

As  soon  as  we  have  clearly  seen  this  very  definite  fact 
of  the  rigid  natural  causation  between  thought  and  act, 
between  conscious  thought  and  conscious  act,  between 
conscious  act  and  conscious  thought,  relations  which  have 
always  been  recognized,  and  between  conscious  act  and 
unconscious  thought,  between  unconscious  act  and  uncon- 
scious thought  and  between  unconscious  thought  and 
unconscious  act,  relations  which  are  only  now  beginning 
to  be  recognized,  we  shall  see  also  the  connection  between 
unconscious  thought  and  those  varieties  of  act  which  are 
partly  conscious  and  partly  unconscious.  By  this  I  mean 
errors,  blunders,  mistakes  of  all  kinds,  slips  of  the  pen, 


ORGAN  INFERIORITY  COMPENSATED     201 

tongue,  hand,  foot,  etc.,  none  of  which  has  hitherto 
had  any  significance  for  teacher  or  pupil,  but  which 
now  are  seen  to  have  a  very  deep  one.  For  it  is  a  fact 
amply  demonstrated  that  every  error  is  the  partly  uncon- 
scious gratification  of  an  unconscious  wish,  and  as  all 
unconscious  wishes  are  wishes  for  one  or  the  other  kind 
of  creativeness,  it  turns  out  paradoxically  enough  that 
the  so-called  accidental  breaking  of  an  object  or  the  tear- 
ing of  a  page  or  the  spoiling  of  a  written  exercise  is  the 
conscious  manifestation  of  an  unconscious  wish  to  create 
and  not  to  destroy.  This  fact  puts  a  different  aspect 
upon  all  the  misdeameanours  of  children  and  makes 
understandable  in  a  way  never  before  appreciated  the 
words :  Forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do. 

Organ  Inferiority  Naturally  Compensated 

A  defence  of  the  present  system  of  education  is  that  it 
gives  a  well-rounded  development,  that  the  subjects 
which  the  student  finds  disagreeable  or  difficult  are  the 
very  ones  he  most  needs,  inasmuch  as  his  disinclination 
to  follow  them  up  is  an  indication  that  they  are  his  weak 
points,  and  that  if  he  should  be  allowed  to  neglect  them 
he  would  be  like  a  person  refusing  to  exercise  his  weak 
arms  and  preferring  to  develop  further  his  comparatively 
strong  legs.  It  is  also  a  fact,  on  the  other  hand,  that  an 
innate  constitutional  weakness  in  any  part  of  the  organ- 
ism tends  to  be  compensated  for,  not  merely  by  a 
greater  strengthening  of  some  other  part,  as  when  a  blind 
man  develops  keener  sense  of  touch  than  one  who  sees 
normally,  but  in  many  cases  the  constitutional  weakness 
or  inferiority  of  an  organ,  such  as  an  eye,  results  in  a 


202    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

more  efficient  use  and  greater  development  of  the  same 
organ,  as  when  a  person  with  low  sensitivity  to  colour 
or  form  becomes,  by  this  compensating  mechanism,  an 
artist,  or  one  with  a  constitutional  defect  of  hearing 
becomes  a  musician.  That  is  to  say,  the  unconscious, 
perceiving  the  defect  of  the  organ  in  question,  devotes 
a  greater  part  of  its  power  to  the  perfection  of  the 
functioning  of  the  inferior  organ  than  the  unconscious 
of  a  person  in  whom  no  such  defect  exists,  and  in  whom 
of  course  that  organ  will  remain  forever  unnoticed. 
Thus  the  classical  illustration  of  the  difficulty  of  this 
nature  triumphantly  overcome  is  that  of  Demosthenes, 
who  conquered  an  impediment  in  his  speech  with  so  great 
an  impetus  that  he  became  an  orator.  And  in  our  own 
day  there  are  numberless  illustrations  of  the  same,  of 
which  I  might  mention  the  case  of  Annette  Kellerman, 
the  great  swimmer,  who  is  said  to  have  been,  as  a  child, 
delicate  and  unusually  afraid  of  the  water.* 

So  that  the  argument  that  the  natural  bent  of  a  person 
is  not  the  thing  to  be  developed  because  it  is  his  strong 
point,  and  the  so-called  faculties  he  shows  no  interest 
in  developing  are  his  weak  points,  is  really  based  on  a 
misinterpretation  of  the  facts.  One  is  most  sensitive 
about  his  weak  points  and  essentially  what  one  takes  the 
most  interest  in  is  the  element  in  his  mental  or  physical 
make-up  which  is  the  tenderest  and  most  sensitive,  so  that 
one's  natural  bent  is  towards  one's  inferior  faculty;  and 
if  education  is  to  do  the  best  for  the  individual,  it  should 
help  him  develop  his  weak  point,  feeling  assured  that 
what  he  takes  least  interest  in  he  has  least  to  fear  from. 

•  If  a  rubber  automobile  tire  tube  is  inflated,  the  thinner  spots  expand 
the  most,  the  weaker  parts  are  the  ones  to  swell  up  to  the  greater  size 
from  the  pressure  of  the  air  within. 


ORGAN  INFERIORITY  COMPENSATED    203 

It  is  evident  that  a  perfectly  functioning  part  attracts 
no  attention.  We  never  know  we  have  a  stomach  until 
we  have  indigestion.  We  never  know  where  our 
appendix  vermiformis  is  (or  was)  until  disorders  in  cer- 
tain locations  call  our  conscious  attention  thither,  and, 
in  some  cases,  make  the  defects  our  strongest  points. 
Similarly  we,  as  a  race,  must  have  thought  or  felt  that 
our  mentality  was  our  weak  point  judging  from  the 
hysterical  efforts  we  have  made  to  fortify  that  position 
by  academic  education. 

There  is  another  consideration  which  comes  in  here. 
If  Gerald  or  Gladys  has  a  perfectly  good  mathematical 
head  and  can  do  twice  as  much  as  Betty  or  Bobby,  they 
of  course  to  a  certain  extent  enjoy  the  prestige  which  this 
superiority  gives  them  and  will  more  or  less  take  advan- 
tage of  the  opportunity  for  exhibitionism  of  a  mild  type 
which  they  have,  but  the  prominence  thus  gained  is  made 
uncomfortable  for  them  frequently  by  the  remarks  only 
quasi-admiring  which  their  companions  and  relatives 
make  about  them  at  school  and  at  home.  In  short, 
there  is  in  every  domestic  and  scholastic  environment  a 
mild  tendency  to  look  upon  mathematical  excellence,  at 
least,  as  a  sort  of  freakishness.  The  boy  or  girl  who  can 
work  without  effort  the  most  exacting  algebraic  problems 
arouses  in  other  pupils  and  even  to  a  certain  extent  in 
the  adults  of  the  environment  a  certain  degree  of  envy 
which  is  expressed  in  one  of  two  ways,  commonly.  It 
is  expressed  as  extravagant  compliment,  the  insincerity 
of  which  is  quite  apparent  to  the  victim  of  it,  or  it  comes 
out  as  a  statement  that  those  who  excel  in  mathematics 
generally  do  not  excel  in  anything  else.  This,  if  repeated 
often  enough  to  constitute  a  family  tradition,  has  a  very 


204    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

suggestive  effect  upon  the  child  who  suffers  from  such 
remarks. 

Then  there  is  in  a  great  many  people,  young  and  old, 
an  unfortunate  tendency  to  belittle  the  accomplishments 
in  which  they  themselves  excel  and  to  overvalue  the 
accomplishments  of  others.  This  has  both  a  subjective 
and  an  objective  cause.  The  objective  cause  is  the  very 
fact  that  misery  loves  company  and  that  those  who  are 
inexpert  in  anything  have  many  sympathizers.  They  have 
lots  of  good  company.  The  subjective  cause  is  found  in 
the  fact  that  a  very  great  many  young  people  have  num- 
erous good  but  unconscious  reasons  for  not  wishing  to 
excel  in  anything.  Excellence  brings  responsibilities,  as 
riches  provoke  appeals.  One  who  can  do  anything  super- 
latively well  has  many  requests  to  perform,  both  for  the 
profitless  exhibition  of  his  prowess  and,  as  numberless 
people  in  all  walks  of  life  will  testify,  for  the  actual  doing 
of  favours  from  which  the  recipient  is  the  only  person  to 
benefit.  It  is  only  recently  that  the  doctrine  of  selling 
oneself  to  all  people  in  a  certain  sense  is  being  advocated 
as  the  best  means  of  getting  on.  It  is  quite  evident  on 
careful  consideration  that  this  preparing  of  oneself  to 
serve  others  and  in  so  doing  correctly  evaluating  one's 
own  powers  has  no  small  part  to  play  in  the  unconscious 
life,  if  it  has  not  in  the  conscious  life  of  even  the  very 
young  school  child. 

What  are,  then,  the  activities,  mental  and  physical, 
which  will  enlist  the  unconscious  wishes  as  well  as  the 
conscious  ones,  and  enable  the  incipient  motions  to  be 
carried  out  to  an  end  which  shall  be  the  appropriate 
relaxation  of  the  tension?  For  every  tension  aims  only 
at  relaxation  or  resolution  and  every  state  of  relaxation 


ORGAN  INFERIORITY  COMPENSATED     205 

must,  for  life  to  continue,  be  followed  by  a  tension.  So 
a  rhythm  is  set  up  which  is  the  rhythm  of  life.  A  mass 
of  protoplasm  absolutely  relaxed  would  be  a  spineless, 
nerveless  and  therefore  motionless  body  which  would 
never  subsequently  move  of  itself.  So  that  in  the  relaxed 
tissues,  mental  and  physical,  after  the  discharge  of  the 
activity,  there  must  be  a  nucleus  of  a  new  tension,  an 
embryonic  wish  which  is  to  be  the  father  of  the  new  ten- 
sion; or  else  a  part  of  the  old  wish  must  be  left  as  the 
beginning  of  the  new  one,  in  which  case  the  discharge  of 
energy  producing  the  relaxation  would  not  be  complete 
each  time.  Possibly  an  absolutely  complete  discharge 
would  be  synonymous  with  death. 

We  have  seen  that  if  the  activities  proposed  for  the 
child  do  not  enlist  the  cooperation  of  the  unconscious 
wish,  there  is  never  a  real  accomplishment,  but  only  a 
pretended  one,  and  if  it  is  not  thought  that  the  pretended 
accomplishments  are  not  as  good  as  the  real  ones,  it  will 
seem  necessary  to  chose  the  real  accomplishments  for  the 
young  and  set  them  the  task  of  achieving  the  real  things 
of  life.  Now,  what  are  the  tasks  that  can  be  set  for 
children  to  accomplish  as  something  really  valuable  to 
society? 

The  only  thing  accomplished  by  the  effort  to  lift  a  ship 
was  the  heating  of  the  individual's  body  who  tried.  The 
only  effect  of  the  effort  to  master  the  meaning  of 
Shakespeare  or  Vergil  or  Napier  or  Lavoisier  is  the 
wearing  of  grooves  in  the  brain  of  the  child.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  only  result  worth  attaining  by  mortals  is 
a  result  effected  upon  the  external  world.  This  is  true 
both  because  of  the  effect  on  the  world  and  the  effect  on 
the  individual.    They  are  both  different.    The  only  result 


2o6    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

attained  by  a  great  many  people  is  a  resulting  change  in 
themselves  by  virtue  of  which  they  react  to  the  world 
in  a  manner  different  from  the  way  they  did.  This  is 
the  only  result  gained  by  the  present  system  of  education 
from  the  kindergarten  to  the  doctorate.  It  may  be  said 
that  the  full  course  of  twenty  years  of  education  may 
be  preparing  the  young  person  to  follow  some  calling 
when  it  calls,  though  there  is  a  great  of  diversity  of 
opinion  about  this  point.  We  never  shall  be  able  to  tell 
whether  it  does  or  not,  because  we  never  shall  know  how 
the  boy  who  has  gone  through  college  would  have  done  if 
he  had  not  gone,  and  our  own  testimony  about  ourselves 
is  worthless. 


Turning  the  Child  from  Reality 

Is  the  change  to  which  we  subject  the  children  for 
twenty  years  in  schools  and  colleges  a  real  change  and  a 
desirable  change?  I  believe  that  up  to  the  present  time 
the  only  essential  change  has  been  an  undesirable  one. 
What  we  have  really  accomplished  in  the  youth  of  our 
country  is  a  turning  them  away  from  reality. 

There  have  been  many  motives  for  turning  children 
away  from  reality,  the  same  motives  we  have  ourselves 
for  turning  away  from  reality,  motives  which  may  be 
grouped  under  the  one  rubric — undesirability.  To  con- 
sciousness of  a  certain  type  and  at  a  certain  stage  of 
development  reality  is  undesirable  because  it  is  bad  or 
unpleasant.  It  is  hard,  it  is  unsympathetic,  hostile,  it  is 
ugly,  and  fatiguing,  and  it  smells  bad.  In  contrast  to 
this  ideality  is  everything  that  reality  is  not.  Heaven 
is  the  mental  projection  of  everything  that  is  idealized, 


TURNING  CHILD  FROM  REALITY      207 

the  product  of  a  phantasy  compensating  for  the  sense  of 
inferiority,  of  lack  of  mastery,  of  misery  in  general, 
which  a  certain  type  of  humanity  experiences  in  its  con- 
tact with  the  world. 

Just  as  the  infant  annihilates  an  uncomfortable  sen- 
sation with  a  wriggle  or  represses  the  pangs  of  hunger 
by  the  ecstatic  sucking  on  its  thumb,  so  do  adults 
annihilate  the  adversities  of  an  objective  world  by  a 
mental  wriggle,  and  repress  the  pangs  of  unsatisfied 
desire  of  all  kinds  by  ecstatic  absorption  in  an  ideal 
vision  or  phantasy.  If  we  have  not  what  we  think  we 
want,  we  can  get  it  ideally  by  vivid  imagination.  In 
A  Kiss  for  Cinderella,  little  "  Miss  Thing "  wishes  so 
hard,  in  order  to  balance  her  unhappy  lot,  that  she  suc- 
ceeds in  a  dream  in  imagining  a  ball  exactly  as  she  would 
desire  it. 

This  turning  away  from  reality  is  inevitable  when  the 
mental  content  of  the  person  is  words  rather  than  ideas 
or  things.  The  use  of  money  as  a  medium  of  exchange 
of  goods  is  analogous  to  the  use  of  words  as  a  means 
of  exchange  of  ideas  (=things=goods).  The  special 
attention  to  money  as  such  makes  the  numismatist  or 
the  bank  teller  or  the  miser.  The  special  attention  to 
words  as  such  makes  the  philologist  or  the  lexicographer 
or  the  lunatic. 

We  cannot  give  our  boys  and  girls  practical  experience 
in  geography  by  sending  them  from  one  country  to 
another.  Some  of  them  take  it  themselves  by  running 
away,  and  of  these  many  make  very  fine  men.  Those  not 
so  fine  are  not  less  fine  solely  on  account  of  their 
travels  and  experience  of  the  world,  but  for  other  rea- 
sons. 


2o8    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

We  cannot  give  our  boys  and  girls  practical  experience 
in  the  household  arts.  Only  a  few  get  it,  and  the  number 
is  diminishing  yearly.  An  attempt  to  make  up  for  it  is 
being  made  by  the  schools  with  courses  in  sewing  and 
domestic  science.  But  the  actual  time  that  is  devoted  to 
this  activity  is  so  short  and  the  results  are  so  meagre 
that  they  can  be  ignored. 

We  cannot  as  a  part  of  a  school  course  adequately 
train  young  people  to  be  stenographers  and  typewriters. 
We  cannot,  in  short,  make  of  them  va:luable  operatives 
or  workers  of  any  kind  while  they  are  in  school  or  college. 
If  they  turn  out  to  be  good  workers,  it  is  in  spite  of  their 
school  tasks,  and  not  because  of  them.  What,  then,  do 
we  do  with  them  in  our  educational  institutions  ?  We  do 
two  things  to  their  unconscious  wishes.  We  repress 
their  unconscious  wishes  to  do  real  things  in  the  world, 
for  there  is  no  real  thing  done  in  school.  I  have  been 
many  times  mildly  disgusted  with  the  universal  attitude 
of  boys  and  girls  toward  the  visible  result  of  their  school 
work,  results  visible  in  the  shape  of  exercises  in  algebra, 
English,  French,  Latin.  Naturally,  of  course,  they 
throw  them  away,  as  soon  as  they  think  the  teacher's 
eye  is  finally  removed  from  them.  And  I  myself  in 
earnest  zeal  collected  notes  in  college,  thinking  I  might 
use  them  some  time,  but  I  have  never  once  had  occasion 
to  refer  to  them.  The  student  knows  that  every  word  he 
writes,  every  sum  he  does,  every  exercise  he  finishes  has 
been  done  and  repeatedly  done  by  millions  of  other  chil- 
dren. Every  fact  imparted  to  him  in  biology,  for  in- 
stance, is  better  expressed  and  more  beautifully  illustrated 
In  numberless  inexpensive  manuals,  any  one  of  which 
could  be  gotten  on  almost  an  hour's  notice,  if  he  had 


TURNING  CHILD  FROM  REALITY       209 

any  use  for  it.  There  is  in  this  kind  of  prescribed  work 
a  sort  of  double  uselessness  for  the  student.  If  he  did 
it  as  well  as  a  school  child  or  a  college  man  could  pos- 
sibly do  it,  there  is  a  multitude  of  other  forms  in  which 
the  same  work  has  been  done  and  all  of  them  as  good  or 
better. 

I  emphasize  this  point  in  order  to  bring  out  the  fact 
that  one  of  the  main  unconscious  wishes  is  here  in  every 
child  frustrated,  namely  the  wish  for  superiority,  and  I 
am  sure  that  the  wish  for  superiority,  for  mastery,  for 
victory,  is  a  wish  for  a  real  mastery  over  the  external 
world  and  not  a  mastery  of  self.  And  this  victory  over 
the  external  world  is  rendered  impossible  by  waging  the 
battle  in  a  place  immured  from  the  world,  in  the  school 
(=schola=leisure=absence  of  real  work),  and  the  high- 
school  pupils  take  for  their  graduating  motto  Ex  scholae 
vita  in  scholam  vitae*  which  fitly  symbolizes  the  segrega- 
tion. Thus  are  the  main  unconscious  wishes  inevitably 
frustrated.  It  is  agreed,  by  common  consent  of  all 
parties,  of  pupils,  teachers  and  parents,  that  the  work 
of  the  schools  and  colleges  cannot  of  itself  be  really 
productive. 

But  I  do  not  believe  that  the  most  educative  activity, 
that  which  draws  out  of  a  man  or  woman  the  best  that 
is  in  him  or  her,  can  possibly  be  an  activity  which  re- 
presses the  unconscious  desire  to  do  real  things,  acomplish 
real  results,  create  real  new  entities,  which  in  the  real 
world  every  real  worker  is  doing  from  the  labourer  to 
the  banker,  from  the  switchman  to  the  railroad  pres- 
ident (?). 

If  we  should  say  to  a  child,  "  You've  got  to  play  till 

*  Out  from  the  life  of  school  into  the  school  of  life. 


2IO    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

you're  twenty-five;  you've  got  to  make  believe  till  you're 
a  full-grown  man,"  he  would  revolt  at  the  thought,  for 
even  the  play  of  the  most  real  children  is  an  imitation 
of  the  real  activities  they  see  about  them.  They  want 
to  be  policemen,  firemen,  engineers,  storekeepers,  chey 
consciously  desire  to  do  the  very  things  they  see  adults 
do,  and  the  system  of  education  handed  down  from  anti- 
quity represses  their  conscious  desires  for  concrete  reality 
into  their  unconscious,  it  continues  this  repression  for 
twenty  years  in  some  cases,  requiring  them  to  accept 
words  in  place  of  things,  symbols  in  lieu  of  the  realities 
academically  symbolized. 

Possible  Reality  in  Child's  Life 

And  what  are  the  real  things  which,  in  spite  of  the 
academic  barriers  designed  apparently  to  keep  real  things 
out, — what  are  the  real  things  which  the  boy  or  girl 
gets  in  the  artificial  life  of  school  or  college?  For  they 
do,  in  spite  of  their  immurement,  get  some  reality.  A 
common  distinction  is  made  between  lessons,  lectures, 
tasks,  exercise,  etc.,  and  the  school  or  college  "  activities  " 
which  we  all  know  are  quite  the  opposite  in  character, 
but  are  academicized  in  order  to  fit  into  the  system. 
They  get  football  and  basket-ball  and  societies  and  dances, 
and  the  boys  and  girls  get  each  other,  which  is  no  doubt 
very  good  for  them.  They  get  to  know  each  other  bet- 
ter, but  for  this  they  have  not  to  thank  the  teachers  or 
superintendents  or  the  system  in  general.  They  are  face 
to  face  with  reality  in  the  shape  of  each  other,  but  a 
reality  toned   down   and   made   constrained   and   artlfi- 


POSSIBLE  REALITY  IN  CHILD'S  LIFE     211 

cial  by  the  aggressive  presence  of  teachers  and  equip- 
ment. 

I  said  that  the  unconscious  wishes  of  the  student  are 
repressed  in  two  ways,  by  the  suppression  of  the  wish 
for  superiority,  which  can  be  satisfied  only  on  concrete 
reality,  and  there  is  another  which  I  have  not  mentioned. 
It  is  the  substitution  for  it  of  a  highly  artificial  system  of 
unrealities,  the  net  result  of  which  on  the  student  is  an 
unconscious  or  partly  conscious  impression  of  hypocrisy, 
deception  and  insincerity.  Even  in  the  ancient  Roman 
times  whence  all  this  pedagoguery  originated,  Juvenal 
satirized  the  senselessness  of  the  school  children  arguing 
about  supposititious  problems. 

I  am  aware  that  I  seem  to  verge  toward  realism  and 
away  from  idealism  (the  ideal  being  the  consequently 
superior) ,  and  invite  the  uncomplimentary  comments  of 
all  who  deem  themselves  idealistic  and  aspiring  to  higher 
ideals,  the  life  of  reason  as  opposed  to  the  life  of  passion, 
the  intellectual  as  opposed  to  the  material,  and  I  shall  by 
thoughtless  ones  be  branded  as  a  crass  materialist.  But 
I  feel  that  the  concept  of  the  development  of  the  mind- 
body  combination  which  I  shall  propose  is  as  truly  ide- 
alistic as  possibly  could  be,  and  at  the  same  time  remain 
practical. 

For  I  think  the  time  will  some  day  come  when  children 
will  be  taught  to  do  what  they  can  constructively  and 
creatively  accomplish.  We  proceed  today  upon  the  prin- 
ciple that  an  individual  cannot  actually  produce  any 
valuable  work  until  he  is  about  twenty-five  years  old, 
whereas  we  know  that  physical  puberty  comes  to  men  as 
early  as  fourteen  and  women  as  early  as  twelve.  We 
thus  keep  from  productive  work  some  women  until  ten 


212    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

or  twelve  years  after  they  are  physically  capable  of 
maternity,  and  some  men  for  almost  as  many  years  are 
kept  from  creative  work.  In  other  words,  dominated  by 
the  analogy  between  the  comparatively  greater  length  of 
the  period  of  infancy  in  humans  than  in  other  animals, 
we  consciously  and  purposely  attempt  to  lengthen  the 
period  of  adolescence,  thinking  thereby  to  make  an  added 
improvement.  We  have  thought  to  improve  the  adult- 
hood by  keeping  the  young  people  adolescent  as  long  as 
possible,  because  kittens  and  chickens  who  can  forage  for 
themselves  after  a  very  brief  period  of  maternal  care 
are  not  highly  spiritual  beings.  We  have  gone  on  the 
principle  that,  in  order  to  fit  the  individual  best  to  fight 
the  battle  of  real  life,  we  should  keep  him  from  battle 
as  long  as  possible,  as  if  the  best  preparation  for  any 
activity  was  assiduously  not  doing  that  very  thing,  as  if 
the  deepest  knowledge  of  any  object  were  gained  by  care- 
fully keeping  the  individual  isolated  from  that  object,  so 
that  he  could  not  hear,  see,  touch  or  exercise  any  of  his 
senses  upon  it. 

Early  Acquaintance  with  Reality 

I  am  convinced  that  the  best  preparation  for  the  world 
reality  that  can  be  given  for  the  child  from  the  earliest 
moment  when  it  can  dispense  with  personal  maternal  care, 
is  actual  concrete  acquaintance  with  the  realities  of  the 
world,  and  furthermore  that  every  generation  of  humans 
has  been  prepared  for  its  later  experiences  of  life  solely 
by  means  of  the  earlier  experiences  of  the  same  life,  and 
that,  too,  in  spite  of  any  organized  attempt  to  Imprison 
him  in  schools. 


EARLY  ACQUAINTANCE  WITH  REALITY   213 

Is  it  impossible  that  children  should  be  unable  to  do 
any  productive  work  as  soon  as  they  can  handle  simple 
tools?  I  believe  that  the  training  which  the  child  can 
get  in  natural  surroundings  in  a  rural  district  in  touch 
with  the  animal  and  vegetable  world  is  the  training  which 
best  fits  him  to  cope  later  with  the  various  emergencies 
of  human  existence.  That  this  is  not  the  uniform  result 
in  the  case  of  country-bred  youth  I  admit,  but  I  think 
it  is  the  fault  of  the  human  element  in  the  country  and 
not  the  nature  element. 

As  the  tendency  is  for  children  born  and  bred  in  the 
country  to  go  to  the  city,  so  there  should  be  a  reciprocal 
tendency  of  city-born  children  to  go  to  the  country.  If 
it  is  reasonable  for  a  human  to  desire  every  kind  of 
experience,  those  in  the  city  and  in  the  country  should 
change  places.  In  the  country  a  child  can  be  productive 
at  a  very  early  age  in  doing  things  for  which  only  vision 
and  locomotion  are  necessary,  such  as  herding  various 
animals  and  later  in  caring  for  them  when  the  children 
become  strong  enough.  In  the  city  too  there  is  plenty 
of  real  work  that  children  could  do,  if  it  were  only 
permitted.  I  am  not  arguing  for  child-labour,  which 
means  excessive  toil  such  as  tending  for  wearisome  hours 
the  cotton  machines  in  the  South,  but  for  a  moderate 
amount  of  child  activity  which  may  be  encouragingly 
productive  for  the  child.  In  the  country  the  work  done 
by  the  child  has  the  courage  taken  out  of  it  through 
being  unrewarded  by  selfish  parents,  whence  comes  the 
spiritual  impossibility  of  it. 

Some  parents  will  say,  *'  Let  the  children  help  their 
parents."  In  the  country  boys  can  and  do  help  their 
fathers,  and  to  a  limited  extent  in  the  city.     And  both 


214    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

boys  and  girls  can  help  around  the  house.  But  it  is 
notorious  how  much  they  prefer  to  help  in  other  people's 
houses  rather  than  helping  their  own  families.  In  the 
first  place  they  are,  in  helping  other  people  than  their 
own  families,  doing  something  of  their  own  accord,  and 
in  the  second  they  are  much  more  generously  rewarded  in 
praise  and  other  more  material  ways  than  at  home,  where 
their  services  are  taken  as  a  matter  of  course  and  as 
something  due.  Then  there  is  the  variety,  which  has 
a  great  appeal  for  everyone,  not  only  children.  I  re- 
member as  a  boy  leaving  my  own  small  garden  uncared 
for,  which  my  mother  declared  she  could  not  understand, 
and  going  to  work  for  the  farmers  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. 

Is  a  young  person's  recreation  a  bit  less  wholesome,  if 
it  comes  after  a  brief  period  of  actual  creation  of  value? 
Because  all  work  and  no  play  makes  Jack  dull,  are  we  to 
deprive  him  of  all  work?  Work  and  play,  child  and  man, 
city  and  country,  travel  and  home  should  all  be  mingled 
in  about  equal  proportions,  so  that  everyone  could  have 
some  of  everything. 

True  Democracy  in  Education 

This  will  in  some  distantly  future  day  work  out  in 
somewhat  the  following  manner,  when  there  is  true 
democracy  and  political  and  every  other  kind  of  equality. 
Children  will  be  taken  over  from  the  parents  to  the  state 
between  the  ages  of  five  and  ten  years.  If  city  born  they 
will  be  transferred  to  the  country,  and  vice  versa,  at  a 
later  date.  They  will  be  sent  to  different  parts  of  the 
country,  too,  and  engage  in  different  occupations  in  all 


TRUE  DEMOCRACY  IN  EDUCATION     215 

of  which  they  will  take  huge  delight.  They  will  share  in 
all  the  occupations  of  adults,  and  will  keep  moving  in 
circuits  from  place  to  place,  returning  occasionally  to 
their  own  parents,  but  in  the  meantime  living  with  other 
children's  parents  in  other  homes.  The  children  in  each 
house  will  change  periodically,  thus  giving  the  adults  a 
new  experience,  as  well  as  themselves.  Each  child  will 
be  required  to  keep  a  diary,  which  he  or  she  will  read 
to  each  new  household,  as  they  progress  through  the 
land,  and  thus  the  necessary  practice  in  verbal  training 
will  be  given.  The  homes  thus  exchanged  will  be  kept  up 
to  a  standard  of  efficiency  and  morale  by  government  in- 
spectors, and  the  hours  of  work,  recreation  and  study 
will  be  regulated  according  to  the  best  interests  of  the 
world-nation  for  the  production  of  the  most  useful 
citizens. 

There  will  be  no  hermits.  Every  social  duty  which 
should  be  performed  by  everyone  will  be  performed  by 
everyone.  Everyone  will  have  the  widest  possible  variety 
of  experience,  including  work,  recreation  and  solitude, 
noise,  music  and  silence,  action  and  inaction  in  properly 
distributed  proportions.  There  will  not  only  be  no  actual 
ostensible  hermits  but  there  will  be  no  spiritual  hermits 
of  the  repressed  variety.  Everybody's  mind  will  be  open 
to  everybody  else's  inspection,  just  as  now  everybody's 
face  in  Caucasian  countries  is  open,  and  not  veiled  up  to 
the  eyes.  Only  when  we  shall  finally  be  able  to  look  the 
whole  world  in  the  face,  not  alone  because  we  owe  not 
any  man  but  because  or  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  do 
owe  or  have  been  guilty,  or  have  failed,  shall  we  be  able 
to  live  in  a  really  social  atmosphere,  and  develop  all  the 
relations  which  alone  evoke  the  fullest  growth  in  our- 


2i6    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

selves.  In  this  more  conscious  Illumined  time  to  which 
I  am  now  looking  forward,  when  people  shall  have 
crawled  forth  from  the  egotistical  prison  cells  in  which 
they  are  now  benighted — "  Confined  and  pestered  in  this 
pinfold  here  " — true  superiority  will  be  recognized  and 
repression  of  the  kind  which  drives  unpleasant  or  pain- 
ful ideas  back  into  the  unconscious  will  not  exist.  Any- 
body may  say  or  attempt  to  do  anything  to  anybody, 
and  no  offence  can  be  taken,  because  an  insult,  for  in- 
stance, will  be  unable  to  act  as  a  complex-indicator  in 
the  person  insulted,  but  only  in  the  insulting  person,  pro- 
vided that  so  much  unwholesomeness  remains  as  to  render 
such  waste  of  time  possible.  A  person  who  insults  another 
because  he  himself  has  done  a  wrong  will  be  illuminated 
sufficiently  to  see  that  it  is  his  own  maladjustment  which 
he  is  verbally  expressing,  and  not  the  action  of  the  in- 
sulted person. 

A  Recitation  Experiment 

At  the  present  time,  and  with  educational  facilities 
limited  as  they  are,  it  is  of  course  impracticable  to  attempt 
any  of  the  innovations  suggested  above  for  the  purpose 
of  making  the  child's  life  more  real.  But  the  teacher  in 
the  school  of  the  present  day  can  reproduce  to  some 
extent  the  mental  attitudes  of  adults  in  the  world  without 
the  school.  Even  in  such  a  subject  so  far  removed  from 
the  present  day  as  an  ancient  language,  the  method  of 
handling  the  required  work  can  be  approximated  to  the 
spiritual  environment  which  the  child  will  find  outside  of 
the  school.  It  may  be  said  that  the  teacher  is  In  com- 
plete control  of  the  situation  In  the  classroom  In  his  ability 


A  RECITATION  EXPERIMENT         217 

to  reproduce  through  his  actions  the  atmosphere  which 
the  child  will  meet  in  the  world  or  to  create  a  cloister- 
like  atmosphere  which  will  make  the  child's  entrance  into 
the  world  an  entrance  into  an  entirely  strange  place  in 
which  he  will  not  know  how  to  act. 

With  a  view  to  reproducing  in  his  classroom  some  of 
the  elements  of  the  real  extra-academic  conditions  a 
teacher  of  Latin  in  one  of  the  high  schools  of  a  large  city 
instituted  a  scheme  which  he  found  to  work  very  well. 
Its  essential  feature  was  the  instant  recognition  of  and 
Immediate  recompense  for  the  mental  activity  of  the 
pupil.  It  was  to  a  certain  degree  modelled  upon  the  old- 
fashioned  spelling  bee.  Seating  the  members  of  the  class 
at  the  beginning  of  the  term  in  a  chance  order  (alpha- 
betical), he  allowed  the  first  pupil  in  the  class,  as  thus 
arranged,  to  recite  first.  If  his  recitation  was  defective 
in  the  slightest  degree,  the  next  pupil  was  given  the  chance 
to  do  the  same  thing.  If  he  did  it  perfectly,  he  changed 
places  with  the  first  pupil.  The  actual  shifting  about  was 
found  to  be  an  immense  relief  to  the  pupils,  and  legiti- 
mately released  a  great  deal  of  physical  energy  which  is 
superfluous  at  that  age.  The  chance  to  "  recite  "  passed 
down  the  whole  class,  giving  an  equal  opportunity  to  each 
pupil  to  express  himself  in  his  best  manner,  which  he  con- 
stantly studied  by  comparison  with  the  mistakes  of  others. 
When  a  pupil  at  the  head  of  the  class  made  a  perfect 
recitation  he  went  to  the  foot  of  the  class  and  had  the 
opportunity  to  make  his  way  again  to  the  head.  Each 
complete  progress  through  the  class  was  recorded  by 
the  teacher,  and  the  relative  accomplishments  of  all  the 
pupils  were  on  record,  and  available  for  report  at  any 
time  according  to  their  positions  in  the  class  and  the 


2i8    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

number  of  times  they  had  gone  from  the  foot  to  the  head. 
The  similarity  of  the  situation  to  extra-mural  reality  is 
twofold,  for  the  child  can  by  this  means  get  an  immediate 
reward  for  his  attention  and  his  effort  and  he  can  plan 
by  preparation  for  more  distant  ends  and  aims.  At  the 
end  of  one  day's  recitation  each  pupil's  position  In  the 
class  is  registered  by  the  fact  that  he  is  represented  by  a 
card,  and  the  cards  can  either  be  collected  or  handed  in 
by  the  pupils  In  the  exact  position  In  which  they  were  at 
the  end  of  the  period.  At  the  beginning  of  the  next  day's 
recitation  the  cards  are  laid  on  the  desks  In  the  order  in 
which  they  were  taken  up  and  the  game  goes  on  at  exactly 
the  point  where  it  was  Interrupted.  There  Is  thus  a  con- 
tinuity which  is  preserved  for  a  whole  term. 

A  word  should  be  said  as  to  just  what  Is  meant  by  a 
*'  recitation."  It  can  mean  any  unit  of  expression,  great 
or  small,  which  the  teacher  finds  it  best  to  use.  For  In- 
stance, in  beginners'  Latin  classes  a  "  recitation  "  means 
the  inflection  of  the  singular  of  a  noun,  or  the  reading 
and  translation  of  a  short  sentence  of  Latin.  In  third- 
year  Latin  It  may  mean  the  translation  of  a  paragraph  of 
Cicero,  or  a  sentence  or  a  clause,  according  to  the  exigen- 
cies of  the  case.  It  may  mean  the  translation  of  a  sen- 
tence from  English  into  Latin,  or  the  statement  concern- 
ing the  syntax  of  a  noun  or  a  verb. 

In  order  to  correlate  the  attention  of  all  the  pupils, 
the  teacher  invites  the  criticism  of  each  and  every  one. 
Anyone  having  a  criticism  to  make  raises  his  hand,  and 
at  the  proper  time  is  recognized  by  the  teacher,  exactly 
as  a  member  of  a  deliberative  assembly  Is  recognized  by 
the  chair.  If  the  criticism  is  just,  the  pupil  making  it  Is 
allowed  to  go  ahead  of  the  one  sitting  ahead  of  him,  who 


A  RECITATION  EXPERIMENT         219 

takes  the  inferior  place.  Any  suggestion  on  the  part  of 
the  pupils  about  any  point  connected  with  the  work  is 
accepted  by  the  "  chair,"  but  if  it  is  ruled  out  as  being 
a  bad  one,  in  any  way  unsocial,  as  obstructing  the  work 
in  hand  rather  than  furthering  it,  the  maker  of  the  sug- 
gestion is  fined  by  being  required  to  go  back  one  place. 
Thus  is  secured  a  high  degree  of  flexibility,  a  true  democ- 
racy, and  a  focussing  of  attention  on  the  work  to  be  done. 
The  conduct  of  the  recitation  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
pupils  themselves,  and  it  is  sometimes  inspiring  to  see 
the  intensity  of  interest  that  is  manifested,  each  pupil 
trying  his  best  to  improve  his  position  in  the  class  by 
studying  the  performances  of  the  others.  So  tense  was 
the  atmosphere  on  one  occasion,  so  breathlessly  did  the 
class  as  a  whole  watch  the  performance  of  a  particularly 
good  student  that  the  ticking  of  a  small  clock  in  a  closet 
in  the  classroom  was  quite  audible.  The  details  of  this 
scheme  are  so  interesting,  so  close  to  the  unconscious 
wish  for  superiority  does  it  bring  even  the  work  con- 
nected with  a  dead  language,  that  the  pupils  have  them- 
selves made  many  suggestions  which  have  been  adopted, 
materially  changing  certain  features  of  it,  and,  I  am 
told,  it  is  in  a  continual  process  of  evolution. 

The  "  work  "  of  the  teacher,  as  regards  details  which 
are  purely  academic  and  non-social,  is  reduced  to  a  mini- 
mum. On  the  principle  that  the  pupils  are  the  ones  who 
should  develop  themselves,  and  that  the  teacher  should 
not  be  the  only  one  whose  mind  is  to  be  improved,  the 
expressions  of  personality  are  almost  entirely  on  the  part 
of  the  pupils.  The  teacher  could  leave  the  class  and  the 
work  go  on  in  his  absence,  almost  as  well,  after  the  class 
as  a  whole  has  grasped  the  main  idea  of  it.    In  this  sense 


220    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

it  is  highly  democratic,  social  and  progressive.  There  is 
no  theme  which  may  not  come  up  in  connection  with  the 
work  and  be  treated  with  the  utmost  ability  of  any  of 
the  members  of  the  class.  The  lecturing  tendency  of  the 
teacher  is  properly  reduced,  and  the  points  are  brought 
out  by  the  individual  activities  of  the  pupils.  It  has  been 
a  continual  surprise  and  delight  on  the  part  of  the  teacher 
to  see  how  many  new  points  of  view  the  pupils,  in  this 
scheme,  have  the  confidence  to  bring  out,  and  this  teacher 
believes  that  the  dead  language  Latin,  handled  in  this 
way,  is  much  more  alive  than  some  of  the  biology  which 
is  taught  in  the  ordinary  method. 

While  the  strictly  administrative  work  of  the  teacher 
is  reduced  to  a  minimum  by  this  developing  method  of 
conducting  a  recitation,  his  duties  of  guide  and  adviser  are 
much  increased  because  he  has  to  meet  new  situations 
continually.  The  relations  of  the  topics  connected  with 
the  life  of  today  are  real  and  not  artificial.  Not  only  in 
the  Cicero  classes  is  the  parallel  between  present  condi- 
tions and  those  at  Rome  in  the  days  of  the  conspiracy 
brought  out  by  the  pupils  themselves,  according  to  their 
observation  of  the  life  of  today  as  they  get  it  out  of 
school,  but  in  the  lower  classes  there  is  a  special  means 
of  making  the  schoolroom  environment  much  more  like 
that  of  the  world  which  the  pupil  will  later  enter.  The 
teacher  in  short  reacts  to  the  expressions  of  the  pupils 
in  exactly  the  same  way,  wherever  possible,  in  which 
the  people  whom  the  pupils  would  meet  with  the 
greatest  advantage  to  themselves  would  act  toward 
them. 

A  great  resistance  is  manifested  to  the  conditions  of 
this  scheme  by  the  pupils  who  are  unable  to  face  the 


A  RECITATION  EXPERIMENT  221 

adversities  of  the  world.  It  is  very  much  like  a  defeat 
and  in  some  children  least  able  to  cope  with  the  world 
arouses  a  deep  resentment  at  first  to  be  required  to  go 
back  and  physically  and  literally  give  way  before  a  supe- 
rior. His  inferiority  is  "  rubbed  in  "  in  a  very  unpleasant 
manner — at  first,  until  he  finds  that  he  can  by  his  own 
efforts  recover  the  position  he  has  lost.  But  once  having 
found  out  how  quick  are  the  rewards  for  his  sincere  ef- 
forts, how  instantly  he  can  produce  an  effect  with  them,  he 
realizes  that  he  has  it  in  his  power  to  place  himself  as  high 
in  the  class  as  he  wishes. 

The  experience  of  this  teacher  with  this  scheme  of 
eliciting  the  expressions  of  the  individuality  of  the  pupil 
has  shown  him  that  the  unit  of  expression  is  very  small 
at  first  and  that  it  gradually  increases  in  scope.  For  in- 
stance, in  the  teaching  of  Latin  prose  he  has  found  that 
a  preparation  was  necessary  in  the  minds  of  most  pupils 
for  translating  the  English  into  Latin  which  they  would 
not  themselves  make  unless  they  were  put  through  it  in  a 
regular  manner — namely,  the  arrangement  of  the  order 
of  the  Latin  words.  The  scheme  of  securing  this  de- 
veloped into  the  following.  The  pupil  first  reciting  a 
sentence  was  required  to  rephrase  the  English  in  such  a 
way  as  to  give  the  English  words  in  the  Latin  order, 
after  which  the  next  person  gave  a  part  or  the  whole  of 
the  Latin  translation.  Thus  "  Caesar  led  his  army  out 
of  camp  and  drew  it  up  "  would  have  to  be  "  meta- 
phrased "  as:  "Caesar  army  from-camp  having-been- 
led-out  drew-up."  It  turned  out  that  the  process  was  very 
difficult  at  first  but  became  quite  easy  later,  and  produced 
in  the  pupil  a  much  greater  power  of  handling  the  Latin. 
Then  it  developed  that  a  very  valuable  result  was  secured 


222    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

by  giving  the  sentence  to  a  number  of  pupils  equal  to  the 
number  of  the  Latin  words  in  it,  and  getting  each  one  to 
contribute  one  word,  repeating  what  had  been  given  be- 
fore him.  This  produced  a  very  keen  attention  on  the 
part  of  the  pupil,  who  realized  that  he  had  not  only  to 
remember  what  his  predecessors  had  said,  and  attend  to 
their  pronunciation  very  carefully  but  that  he  had  to  be 
absolutely  sure  of  what  he  was  going  to  say,  because  on 
that  sentence  he  would  probably  get  only  one  chance. 
Furthermore,  he  never  knew  when  he  would  be  called  on 
to  recite,  because  he  never  could  tell  how  many  pupils 
ahead  of  him  would  fall  down  on  some  detail  in  the  pro- 
nunciation or  other  feature  of  the  performance. 

Slowly  and  by  a  natural  evolution  this  very  simple 
scheme  worked  out  into  a  great  many  complicated  de- 
tails, each  pupil  taking  an  interest  in  contributing  some 
recommendation  to  help  the  scheme  along  as  a  social  pro- 
ceeding, although  the  words  social  or  democratic  were 
never  used  in  the  room.  The  scheme  worked  itself,  be- 
came a  living  thing,  because  it  appealed  to  a  fundamental 
instinct  of  human  nature,  the  same  instinct  which  is  the 
basis  of  all  democratic  government.  It  had  the  further 
result  of  giving  to  the  pupils  a  feeling  of  control,  which 
obviated  the  necessity  of  the  teacher's  asserting  verbally 
his  authority.  In  fact,  it  removed  from  the  room  the 
feeling  which  is  unconsciously  present  in  the  mind  of 
every  pupil  in  the  ordinary  schoolroom,  a  feeling  that  he 
was  acting  under  authority.  It  was  gratifying  to  see  how 
the  infringements  of  the  principle  that  all  activity  had 
to  be  helpful  were  not  only  paid  for  by  the  pupils'  sug- 
gesting penalties  for  each  other,  but  how  frequently  when 
a  pupil  had  even  unwittingly  or  forgetfully  done  anything 


PERFECTION  OF  NATURE  223 

obstructive,  he  would  go  back  one  place,  thus  Imposing 
a  fine  upon  himself  for  doing  something  which  it  is  pos- 
sible that  no  one  but  himself  saw. 

A  democratic  form  of  schoolroom  management  has 
been  introduced  into  some  schools  and  labelled  the 
"  school  city."  In  each  classroom  a  mayor  is  elected,  a 
police  department,  etc.,  with  the  court  and  trials  and 
other  legal  machinery,  but  it  seems  that  this  teacher's 
scheme  was  far  simpler  and  came  much  nearer  to  getting 
at  the  real  unconscious  motives  of  the  pupils. 

Exceptionless  Perfection  of  Nature 

One  Is  Impressed  with  the  tremendous  unity  of  nature, 
everything  except  man  apparently  completely  fulfilling 
its  appointed  function  all  the  time  without  interruption. 
Man  alone  seems  to  be  interrupted,  his  development  ar- 
rested, his  perfection  prevented.  But  we  do  see  imperfect 
things  in  nature,  dwarfed,  blasted  trees  and  other  ap- 
parent miscarryings.  Yet  they  are  as  perfect  as  their 
environment  allows  them  to  be.  Are  all  humans  as  per- 
fect as  their  surroundings  permit?  They  must  be.  Are 
there  no  perverse  humans?  Is  there  no  wilful  wrong? 
There  can  be  none,  for  why  should  we  believe  that  nat- 
ural laws  work  less  perfectly  in  human  than  in  plant  or 
animal  life?  Is  not  the  most  bestial  human  the  best 
product  that  his  circumstances  could  make  of  him?  Why 
do  we  blame  him  for  his  inhuman  condition?  Is  he  not 
taking,  just  as  we  take,  the  only  steps  possible  to  express 
his  power,  to  get  his  feeling  of  superiority,  his  control 
over  his  environment? 


224    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Why  Educate  at  All? 

What,  then,  do  we  try  to  do  in  education?  Improve  on 
nature,  whose  laws  are  inexorable  and  perfect?  Or  is 
there  some  training  which  is  superlatively  human,  which 
the  uneducated  lack  and  the  academically  educated  re- 
ceive? What  the  human  gets  by  being  trained  in  the 
specifically  human  traits  is  a  development  of  his  con- 
sciousness and  one  of  the  main  objects  of  education  is 
to  bring  into  consciousness  as  many  thoughts  as  possible 
in  such  a  way  as  to  give  him  a  greater  power  over  his 
surroundings.  And  this  amplifying  of  the  conscious  life 
is  not  an  increase  of  scope  of  consciousness  at  any  given 
moment,  but  is,  on  the  contrary,  the  individual's  ability 
to  bring  into  consciousness  more  of  past  experiences  than 
he  would  naturally  do  if  left  to  himself.  For  the  nat- 
ural man,  without  education,  is  limited  in  his  scope  of 
consciousness  by  the  repressions  which  the  fortuity  of 
his  environment  imposes  upon  him.  The  uneducated 
man  is  a  perfect  and  flawless  effect  of  all  the  causes  which 
determine  him  body  and  soul,  but  the  educated  man  is 
the  only  one  who  has  the  power,  however  seldom  he  uses 
it,  of  altering  his  psychical  environment. 

>.• 

Physical  vs.  Psychical  Environment 

Perhaps  I  will  have  to  define  what  I  mean  by  a  psy- 
chical environment  and  differentiate  it  from  a  physical 
one.  Any  man  can  change  his  physical  environment  by, 
for  Instance,  setting  his  house  on  fire,  or  by  raising  a 
field  of  potatoes,  but  in  so  doing  he  does  not  change  his 
psychical  environment,  which  is  the  way  he  mentally  re- 


AMPLIFYING  THE  CONSCIOUSNESS    225 

acts  to  the  physical  ones,  but  by  conscious  effort  along 
directed  lines  he  can  change  his  mode  of  psychical  re- 
action to  physical  surroundings.  He  can  change  it  from 
a  passive,  receptive  one  in  which  he  follows  the  inexo- 
rable laws  of  nature  in  the  same  way  that  animals  do,  or 
he  can  acquire  through  directed  thinking  the  only  char- 
acteristic in  which  he  can  differ  from  the  animals.  His 
inherent  difference  from  the  lower  orders  consistsi  in 
his  ability  to  acquire  the  greater  amplitude  of  conscious- 
ness referred  to  above.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  savage 
is  little  above  the  animal  in  this  respect,  and  that  the 
thoughts  of  the  seer  are  as  far  removed  as  possible  from 
the  dim  consciousness  of  the  uncivilized,  and  that  the 
general  consensus  of  all  men  is  that  the  seer's  thoughts 
are  more  productive  and  have  a  wider  influence  than 
the  savage's.  Therefore  society  has  created  the  seer 
and  held  him  up  as  a  goal  toward  which  all  men  should 
aspire  to  attain  and  travel  as  far  on  the  road  thither  as 
is  possible.  In  creating  this  standard  society  has  placed 
a  greater  value  on  conscious  thoughts,  so  expressed  that 
they  can  be  reproduced  in  the  minds  of  many  people,  than 
it  has  placed  on  any  other  human  creation. 

Amplifying  the  Consciousness 

From  this  the  consciousness-increasing  aim  of  conscious 
education  emerges  clearly  into  view — to  bring  more 
things  (or  thoughts)  into  consciousness,  but  they  must 
be  thoughts  of  a  certain  kind,  thoughts  having  in  them 
enough  of  a  quality  common  to  all  mankind  to  be  accepted 
by  all,  and  a  further  quality  such  that  they  inspire  to 
action,  also  of  a  certain  kind.     The  kind  of  action  re- 


226    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

quired  is  that  which  is  for  the  common  good,  or  for 
the  attainment  of  social  aims. 

One  of  the  advantages  gained  by  the  control  over  the 
mental  reactions  to  physical  environment  is  that  a  per- 
son having  such  control  over  himself  is  not  harmed  in 
the  same  way  by  the  so-called  adversities  coming  to  him 
from  the  external  world,  and  is  not  afraid  to  exert  him- 
self upon  it.  Much  accomplishment  that  would  be  put 
through  by  people  is  prevented  by  their  fear,  either  of 
their  own  inability  to  accomplish  or  of  the  harmful  re- 
sults which  might  come  to  them  from  pushing  their  ef- 
forts to  the  utmost. 

'Academic  Education  to  Remove  Unconscious  Fear 

The  best  academic  education  partially  removes  this 
fear,  which  is  largely  to  blame  for  the  failures  of  the 
youths  and  maidens  who  are  being  academically  educated 
to  accomplish  the  work  laid  out  for  them.  But  when 
we  remember  that  all  fear  is  unconsciously  determined, 
we  see  that  the  person  who  because  of  fear  does  ill  at 
school  or  college  is  the  very  one  who  will  most  be  helped 
by  acquiring  this  new  knowledge.  He  is  also  the  one 
who  is  dominated  by  fear  outside  of  school. 

When  I  say  that  all  fear  is  unconsciously  determined 
I  mean  that  fear  is  really  at  bottom  unconscious  desire. 
A  conscious  fear  of  being  unable  to  do  a  given  lesson  is 
really  an  unconscious  desire  to  do  it,  and  a  state  of  mind 
in  which  fear  is  specially  predominant,  such  as  a  phobia, 
is  one  where  there  is  a  strong  desire  (in  the  phobia 
fundamentally  sexual)  which  is  being  unsatisfied. 


SUBLIMATION  AS  EDUCATIONAL  AIM     227 

Sublimation  as  Educational  Aim 

The  fact,  mentioned  above,  that  the  only  good  results 
from  the  present  system  of  education  come  from  the  dis- 
guising of  the  unconscious  wishes  which  strive  for  ex- 
pression may  be  explained  by  saying  that  the  only  good 
derived  from  education  is  from  sublimation.  Education, 
from  the  side  of  the  learner,  is  a  form  of  sublimation. 
But  sublimation  is  achieved  not  only  in  education.  In- 
deed, it  is  achieved  less  through  formal  education,  that 
is,  by  fewer  persons  than  succeed  in  other  ways  in  sub- 
limating their  unconscious  wishes.  And  the  one  aim  of 
formal  education  ought  to  be  sublimation.  I  have  stated 
this  before  in  saying  that  the  pupil  should  be  taught  to 
transfer  his  mental  activity  from  the  world  of  phantasy 
in  which  he  was  born  to  the  world  of  reality  into  which 
he  sometimes  never  is  born.  That  is  otherwise  expressed 
by  saying  that  the  unconscious  wish  which  in  home  educa- 
tion gets  repressed  before  the  child  is  old  enough  to  go 
to  school  should  first  be  recognized  by  educators,  who 
never  have  recognized  it,  and  then  employed  in  sub- 
limated forms,  a  thing  that  has  never  yet  been  consciously 
done.  It  could  not,  of  course,  be  consciously  done,  be- 
cause the  very  existence  of  the  unconscious  as  a  craving 
for  life,  love  and  activity  was  unknown. 

But  knowing,  as  we  do  now,  something  of  the  exist- 
ence, the  nature  and  the  mechanisms  of  the  unconscious 
wish,  we  shall  gradually  begin  to  be  able  to  get  hold 
of  it,  and  to  sublimate  those  portions  of  it  which  should 
be  sublimated  and  give  the  individual  a  scientific  knowl- 
edge of  those  portions  which  should  not  be  sublimated. 
This  could  not  have  been  done  before  today,  because 


228    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

only  today  have  we  learned  of  the  existence  of  the  un- 
conscious wish,  any  more  than  telephones  could  have 
been  invented  before  the  existence  and  nature  of  electric- 
ity had  been  discovered.  But  we  can  begin  tomorrow,  at 
any  rate,  if  not  today,  to  use  the  energies  of  this  uncon- 
scious wish  in  the  complete  education,  in  the  true  sense 
of  "  drawing  out "  of  it  by  means  of  our  gradually  in- 
creasing knowledge  of  its  nature  and  mechanisms. 

Rapport  vs.   Quiz 

I  imagine  that  the  schools  of  the  future  will  be  con- 
ducted on  a  plan  radically  different  from  that  now 
followed.  There  will  be  no  "  quizzes  "  and  no  attitude 
on  the  part  of  the  teacher  which  suggests  criticism  of 
the  work  of  the  pupils,  but  there  will  be  greater  personal 
relation  of  rapport  between  pupil  and  teacher  than  ever 
could  be  now  under  the  question-and-answer  quiz- 
regime. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  whole  present  educational 
system  better  designed  to  emphasize  and  accentuate  the 
unconscious  antagonism  between  pupil  and  teacher  than 
the  teacher's  simply  asking  the  pupil  a  question  and 
sitting  eagle-eyed  for  the  opportunity  of  swooping  down 
upon  any  flaw  in  the  answer.  This  comminuting  of 
knowledge  (in  the  place  of  the  magnifying  of  wisdom) 
has  reached  such  a  degree  of  absurdity  that  teachers  are 
marked  for  their  success  in  eliciting  complete  sentences 
as  answers  to  questions,  where  the  performance  of  the 
pupil  should  not  be  a  single  sentence  but  a  sustained 
verbal  expression  of  an  intellectual  point  of  view  or  a 
feeling. 


RAPPORT  VS.  QUIZ  229 

The  unconscious  antagonism  of  the  pupil  against  the 
teacher  is  aroused  by  the  implication  contained  in  the 
very  act  of  expressing  the  relation  of  the  teacher  to  the  pu- 
pil as  a  question  about  a  statement  in  a  book.  The 
question  implies  the  inability  of  the  pupil  to  answer  it 
properly,  else  why  should  it  be  put?  If  It  is  not  put  for 
the  purpose  of  making  one  pupil  wretchedly  miserable 
because  he  cannot  answer  it  at  all,  in  the  hope  that  he 
will  be  stirred  by  emulation  if  perchance  another  pupil 
in  his  "  class  "  should  be  able  to  answer  it,  it  is  put  with 
the  design  of  bringing  out  the  defective  elements  in  the 
pupil's  Information,  which  of  course  his  unconscious  is 
most  unwilling  to  have  brought  out  and  exhibited  before 
the  eyes  of  all  his  classmates — sometimes  as  many  as 
sixty  or  seventy  in  some  of  the  public  schools  of  larger 
cities.  And  the  question-putting  method's  effect  on  the 
teacher's  unconscious  makes  him  as  impossible  on  his 
side  as  the  pupil  soon  becomes  on  his  own.  The  im- 
plication in  the  case  of  the  teacher  is  that  he  is  in  a  posi- 
tion to  put  the  question  and  to  correct  the  answer.  There 
seems  nothing  extraordinary  in  this?  The  net  result  for 
the  teacher  is  to  make  him  more  and  more,  as  the  years 
go  on,  merely  a  censorious  critic,  unless  he  Instinctively, 
as  many  do,  tends  In  the  direction  of  sympathy  for  and 
interest  in  his  pupils. 

The  situation  of  being  placed  In  a  position  where  it  is 
one's  duty  to  kill  error  may  have  delighted  the  soul  of 
some  puritanic  ancient  schoolmaster,  but  the  modem 
way  will  be  to  ignore  error  and  encourage  right  ex- 
pression. The  only  way  rightly  to  give  attention  to  er- 
rors is  to  analyse  the  causes  of  why  they  were  committed, 
and  in  the  schools  of  the  future,  if  there  are  enough 


230    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

educational  analysts,  that  may  be  done  and  the  result 
may  be  both  interesting  and  profitable. 

There  will  be  no  quizzes  nor  any  quizziform  attitude 
on  the  part  of  the  teacher.  Questioning  by  the  teacher 
has  also  another  implication,  which  is  that  the  teacher 
thinks  it  is  impossible  to  get  an  expression  of  the  pupil's 
individuality  in  any  other  way.  It  may  be  physically  im- 
possible for  the  teacher  to  get  that  expression  through 
questions  because  of  the  large  numbers  of  pupils,  but 
I  am  sure  that  it  is  impossible  as  a  matter  of  mental 
mechanism  to  get  any  expression,  not  to  say  information, 
by  means  of  the  question  form  of  attack  by  the  teacher. 
As  for  questions  in  general  one  knows,  even  children 
know,  that  a  sincere  question  is  asked  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  getting  information  which  the  questioner  has  not. 
And  when  it  comes  to  playing  or  making  believe  that  the 
teacher  wants  to  know  the  "  answers  "  to  the  questions 
which  he  propounds,  any  child  can  play  at  that  game,  if 
it  so  desires,  out  of  school,  when  it  plays  school,  and 
there  is  little  sense  in  making  this  double  pretence  in  a 
school  where  real  things  ought  to  be.  The  child  has  to 
pretend  that  the  teacher  needs  to  be  told  things,  and 
the  teacher  has  to  pretend  that  he  is  very  anxious  to 
learn.  On  the  other  hand,  children  are  very  much  in- 
terested, of  course,  to  acquire  bits  of  information  which 
the  teacher  has  not.  From  this  point  of  view  the  only 
interesting  teacher  is  the  vulnerable  one,  the  one  in 
whose  knowledge,  since  it  is  a  matter  of  knowledge  con- 
cerning things  which  are  in  themselves  hopelessly  unin- 
teresting, holes  can  be  poked.  The  rare  teacher  who  is 
absolutely  master  of  his  subject  is  naturally  unavailable 
for  this  kind  of  entertainment.     One  cannot  corner  him 


RAPPORT  VS.  QUIZ  231 

or  find  a  weak  spot  In  him  any  more  than  in  a  wall  of 
rock.  His  mental  fagade  has  been  set  in  mortar 
years  ago,  and  is  unsusceptible  to  any  changing  by  any 
efforts  that  a  pupil  could  bring  to  bear  on  him.  If 
nothing  can  be  done  with  him,  what  earthly  interest 
has  he? 

It  is  idle  to  think  that  children  are  interested  in  sub- 
jects in  the  curriculum  as  such.  They  are  mildly  in- 
terested in  the  teachers  for  a  few  hours  or  minutes  until 
they  have  been  classified  as  cross,  pleasant,  good  (effi- 
cient) or  bad  (inefficient),  and  then  the  interest  returns 
to  the  perennial  one — interest  in  each  other  and  the  ef- 
fects they  can  produce  on  each  other.  Very  clever  chil- 
dren can  produce  effects  on  other  children  by  learning 
the  lessons  with  ease,  reciting  them  with  fluency  and 
asking  the  teacher  sly  questions,  all  of  which  place  such 
a  child  in  the  limelight  of  the  classroom  stage,  in  which 
the  other  children,  not  the  teacher,  are  the  audience. 
The  other  children,  not  being  able  to  shine  in  this  arti- 
ficial activity,  are  forced  either  to  give  up  the  Idea  of 
effecting  any  change  on  their  environment,  or  to  devote 
their  energies,  whose  legitimate  object  is  the  effecting 
of  such  a  change,  to  producing  that  effect  on  their  com- 
panions.    Hence  spit-balls. 

It  was  stated  at  the  beginning  of  this  section  that 
the  main  purpose  of  education  Is  the  causing  of  un- 
conscious thought  by  conscious  action.  If  this  is  so, 
what  Is  the  effect  of  the  conscious  actions  which  take  place 
in  such  large  numbers  in  the  schoolroom  upon  the  un- 
conscious thoughts  of  the  scholars?  Nobody  has  ever 
taken  the  trouble  to  consider  that  point  except  remotely 
in  the  general  statement  that  bad  lessons  and  bad  conduct 


232    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

are  a  bad  example  for  the  pupil;  therefore  good  conduct 
should  be  insisted  on  by  the  teacher. 

The  question  of  the  invisible  effect  boys  and  girls  pro- 
duce on  each  other  by  being  in  a  schoolroom  together 
has  been  answered  both  ways  by  separating  them  and 
by  coeducating  them.  But  very  few,  even  educators, 
know  even  instinctively  what  harm  the  conscious  actions 
of  the  boys  can  do  to  the  unconscious  thoughts  of  the  girls 
and  vice  versa,  or  what  good.  And  they  do  not  know  the 
nature  of  the  damage  caused  by  bringing  up  girls  in 
female  academies  and  sending  boys  away  to  boys'  "  prep  " 
schools. 

Another  Aim 

The  causing  of  unconscious  thought  by  means  of  con- 
scious acts  as  a  purpose  of  education  will  not  be  agreed  to 
by  all  pedagogues,  because  there  is  no  accurate  way  of 
measuring  the  effect  on  the  unconscious  thought  caused 
by  the  conscious  action;  if  we  cannot  see  the  effect,  how 
can  we  measure  it?  how  know  that  what  we  do  has  any, 
or  the  right,  effect?  This  is  very  unsatisfactory,  because 
in  our  present  day  question  and  answer,  lecture  and  read- 
ing and  advanced  seminar  style  of  education,  one  can 
get  immediate  measurements  or  estimates  of  the  con- 
scious effect  produced  by  conscious  action.  We  note 
them  down,  in  fact,  proportioned  on  a  scale  of  lOO,  and 
mail  these  notes  frequently  to  parents.  We  ask  the 
pupil  and  find  out  immediately  just  what  he  knows  and 
how  much  effect  we  have  had  on  his  conscious  mental 
activity  by  our  conscious  actions,  and  if  the  effect  has  not 
been  sufficient  we  increase  the  cause.  This  would  seem 
to  express  the  blind  way  in  which  present  systems  work. 


ANOTHER  AIM  233 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  absolutely  no  sure  standard 
by  which  the  unconscious  thought-effect,  derived  from 
conscious  activity,  can  possibly  be  numerically  measured. 
The  effect  caused  in  the  unconscious  by  conscious  activity 
can,  however,  now  be  traced,  and  it  will  not  be  long  be- 
fore it  can  be  more  accurately  known  than  the  conscious. 
It  is,  of  course,  estimated  by  indirect  methods,  but  these 
are  more  sure  than  the  direct  methods  of  question  and 
answer,  laboratory  note  book  and  thesis,  which  are  used 
to  estimate  the  conscious  progress  of  the  student. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  amount  of  conscious 
mental  activity  necessary  to  graduate  from  any  school 
or  college  is  comparatively  small,  and  is  easily  accom- 
plished by  some  persons,  who  are  free  from  the  inhibi- 
tions so  common  to  all  others,  in  half  to  three-quarters 
of  the  time  usually  taken.  The  reason  why  the  average 
student  spends  four  years  in  doing  the  high-school  work, 
and  from  four  to  six  years  in  doing  the  college  work,  is 
that  he  is  influenced  by  tradition  and  other  suggestions 
to  believe  that  the  work  is  hard  and  must  take  so  long. 
Another  reason  is  that  there  is  in  both  secondary  and 
higher  educational  methods  an  inordinate  amount  of  time 
wasted,  during  which  the  pupil  or  student  is  actually  re- 
tarded so  that  the  slowest  may  keep  up  with  him.  There 
is  no  reason  why  all  boys  and  girls  of  a  certain  grade  of 
maturity  should  not  do  all  the  preparation  for  college 
in  one  year  instead  of  four,  if  they  were  willing  to  do 
it,  and  if  at  the  same  time  they  were  not  actually  pre- 
vented by  the  present  methods  of  recitations  in  large 
classes  from  going  ahead  as  fast  as  they  can.  The  actual 
procedure  in  a  so-called  recitation  is  a  method  of  the 
most  dreary  slowness  compared  with  the  vivacity  with 


234    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

which  the  individuals  composing  the  class  attack  prob- 
lems no  less  intellectual,  when  they  understand  the  im- 
portance and  vitality  of  the  subjects  for  their  own  lives. 


Function  of  the  Teacher  of  the  Future 

So  that  the  duty  of  the  teacher  of  the  future  will  be 
to  prepare  the  disposition  of  the  pupil  for  the  acquire- 
ment of  knowledge  and  not  to  give  instructon  itself.  It 
would  appear,  if  at  the  present  time  such  a  practice  were 
carried  on,  that  the  teacher  was  not  minding  his  business, 
for  he  would  not  immediately  begin  talking  to  his  pupils 
about  the  lesson  but  would  take  them  one  at  a  time,  and 
would  at  once  begin  to  listen  to  a  fellow-human  talk 
about  himself.  Only  in  this  way,  by  patient  listening, 
can  the  teacher  know  a  student.  It  has  long  been  known 
that  Magister  Johannem  Lattnum  docet  implies  that  the 
teacher  knows  Latin  if  he  is  to  teach  Latin,  and  further- 
more that  he  knows  John.  Up  to  date  his  knowledge  of 
John  has  been  a  knowledge  only  of  John's  exterior 
superficial  consciousness.  In  the  schools  of  the  future 
"  magister  "  will  be  required  to  know  about  John's  uncon- 
scious, to  have  a  knowledge  both  of  its  nature  and  the 
means  of  inferring  it  from  his  acts,  words  and  other 
expressions. 

In  order  to  get  this  knowledge  he  will  have  to  learn 
from  John  more  than  he  will  ever  be  able  to  teach  him, 
although  the  results  of  his  knowledge  of  John's  uncon- 
scious will  be  communicated  to  John  and  will  be  of  far 
greater  use  to  him  than  any  other  knowledge  he  now 
gains  in  school  or  college. 

So  that  in  the  place  of  recitations  of  large  classes  in 


FUNCTION  OF  TEACHER  OF  FUTURE     235 

which  very  little  of  human  relation  emerges,  except  petty 
rivalry,  teasing  and  other  forms  of  unconscious  man- 
ifestations, there  will  be  only  a  continual  conference  in 
private  between  the  teacher  and  the  pupils  one  at  a  time. 
The  curriculum  of  cultural  and  other  studies  now  covered 
can  be  increased  in  amplitude  almost  ad  infinitum,  if  that 
still  seems  advisable,  and  the  pupil  will  go  from  the 
teacher's  study  or  conference  room  to  the  laboratory,  the 
library,  the  gymnasium  or  the  workshops  and  work  with 
complete  devotion,  as  soon  as  he  understands  the  vitality 
of  social  relations.  To  the  teacher  especially  equipped 
to  teach  expression  in  English  he  will  go  with  an  essay  or 
extemporary  speech,  a  problem  or  a  series  of  questions, 
all  suggested  by  his  own  thinking  and  working  on  the 
problems  of  life  as  he  sees  it. 

This  will  not  necessarily  do  away  with  team  work  in 
learning.  One  of  the  great  advantages  will  be  that  all 
school  work  will  be  done  in  school,  and  none  of  it  in  the 
interruptions  of  desultory  home  life,  a  condition  which 
makes  it  at  present  so  very  hard  for  school  children  to 
do  any  work  at  home.  The  value  of  most  children's 
home  work  is  almost  nil.  There  will  be  discussions  of 
the  points  which  come  up  in  the  literature  read  both  in 
English  and  in  foreign  languages,  and  there  will  be  con- 
versational meetings  for  the  foreign  language  students. 
Pupils  will  be  encouraged  to  study  together  where  such 
combined  methods  do  not  tend  to  strengthen  the  stronger 
of  the  two  and  weaken  the  weaker,  as  is  now  so  frequently 
the  case. 

Attention  will  be  given,  in  a  way  impossible  now  in 
schools,  to  the  development  of  the  mental  and  moral  as 
well  as  of  the  physical  factors  in  the  individual,  and  a 


236    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

development  of  them  in  a  reasonable  and  scientific  pro- 
portion. If  athletics  are  good  for  some,  they  are  good 
for  all,  and  there  will  be  provision  made  for  all  to  share 
in  them;  but  if  it  is  found  that  they  are  unnecessary  for 
all,  as  may  very  well  be  the  case,  it  will  not  be  recom- 
mended for  all.  In  any  case  there  will  be  an  opportunity, 
not  now  afforded,  for  the  teacher  to  be  In  a  position 
to  know  in  detail  of  the  needs  of  the  Individual  as  in- 
dicated by  his  now  utterly  unexplored  unconscious,  and 
put  him  in  the  way  of  satisfying  those  needs  to  a  degree 
that  is  not  now  possible,  and  never  has  been  possible, 
except  in  the  rarest  cases,  such,  for  instance,  as  those  of 
John  Stuart  Mill  and  Thomas  De  Quincey;  and  in  cases 
like  the  latter,  the  element  which  led  to  his  taking  opium 
can  be  detected  and  the  unconscious  wish  impelling  him 
to  that  course  can  be  directed,  in  the  newer  education,  to 
other  and  socially  more  available  aims. 

Religion  and  Sex 

The  great  questions  of  religion  and  sex,  so  closely  re- 
lated in  the  history  of  the  individual  as  well  as  In  that  of 
the  race,  will  be  answered  both  in  language  so  scientific 
that  it  will  obviate  the  objections  by  which  they  are  now 
practically  ruled  out  of  the  schools  except  where  they 
exist  in  a  vestigial,  rudimentary  and  completely  de- 
vltahzed  condition,  although  they  are  questions  which  oc- 
cupy the  unconscious  mentality  of  all  persons  all  the  time. 
The  erroneous  solutions  of  the  problems  connected  with 
religion  and  sex  are  responsible  for  a  large  part  of  the 
crime,  disease  and  even  war  itself — that  running  amuck 
of  the  unconscious  wish. 


RELIGION  AND  SEX  237 

Alongside  of  these  much  more  weighty  questions  of  re- 
ligion and  sex,  both  of  which  are  so  intimately  connected 
with  the  primordial  craving  of  the  ego,  the  actual  ac- 
complishment of  what  are  now  such  burdensome  tasks 
for  pupil  and  student  will  seem  as  nothing.  It  is  a  fact 
that  a  desire  to  satisfy  sexual  and  religious  curiosity,  if 
not  gratified  in  a  natural  and  wholesome  manner,  may  be 
the  cause  of  much  mental  and  moral  confusion  in  later 
life.  It  is  also  a  fact  that  these  two  fields  of  human 
curiosity  are  opened  very  early  in  life,  and  that  they 
are  explored  without  proper  guidance,  both  because  well- 
informed  guides  are  few  and  far  between,  and  because 
those  who  attempt  to  instruct  young  people  in  these  two 
subjects  are  necessarily  full  of  error  coming  from  an 
ignorance  of  the  unconscious  and  of  psychical  mechanisms 
generally. 

It  has  been  proved  again  and  again  that  children  who 
receive  warped  views  of  the  sexual  relations  in  the  narrow 
sense  of  genital  sexuality,  which  they  do  at  a  surprisingly 
early  age,  receive  therein  a  stamp  which  gives  a  perverted 
form  to  every  subsequent  impression,  just  as  a  mirror 
once  broken  into  a  dozen  pieces  will  always  thereafter  re- 
flect light  at  a  dozen  different  angles,  and  as  a  concrete 
sidewalk  trodden  when  soft  by  a  dog  will  always  retain 
the  footprints.  The  removal  of  these  false  or  warped  im- 
pressions will  be  effected  when  the  soul  is  plastic,  in  the 
days  even  before  adolescence,  with  greater  ease  and 
surety  than  it  possibly  could  be  later  in  life.  Medical 
psychology  of  the  analytic  type  is  concerned  chiefly  in 
the  remoulding  of  these  early  fortuitous  and  ill-balanced 
patterns  in  persons  who  have,  because  of  the  pressure  of 
circumstances,  become  neurotics.     The  cause  of  the  neu- 


238    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

rosis  is  always  found  to  be  a  warping  of  the  soul  at  a 
very  early  day,  much  as  if  exposed  too  early  to  the  flames 
of  love.  The  sensibilities  of  such  people  may  be  likened, 
too,  to  the  warped  condition  of  the  lens  of  the  eye  which 
produces  astigmatism,  or  to  the  paralysing  of  the  muscles 
of  accommodation  which  produces  near-sightedness. 
Such  people's  physical  vision  is  always  defective  and  must 
be  corrected  with  artificial  lenses.  The  spiritual  vision 
of  the  neurotic,  the  satisfaction  of  whose  early  sexual 
curiosity  has  not  been  complete,  leaving  him  to  make  er- 
roneous reasonings  of  his  own  about  the  things  most 
personal  and  intimate  to  him,  is  similarly  warped,  and 
all  his  life,  unless  he  has  the  fortune  to  fall  into  the  hands 
of  an  experienced  medical  psychologist,  he  sees  the  real- 
ities of  life  in  a  very  much  distorted  form,  due  to  the 
warping  of  his  spiritual  lens.  The  proper  treatment  can 
either  supply  him  with  an  artificial  one  or  straighten  out 
his  own. 

And  so  the  ordinary  subjects  of  the  curriculum  will  in 
the  schools  of  the  future  retire  in  importance  before  the 
one  great  question  of  the  sanitation  of  the  sexual  impluses 
in  both  the  broad  and  the  narrow  sense.  In  speaking 
of  sexuality  in  the  narrow  sense  I  mean  of  course  the 
specifically  genital  sexuality  which  comes  into  existence  at 
puberty.  Definite  information  which  is  now  not  possessed 
by  the  majority  of  married  couples  on  this  point  will  un- 
doubtedly have  to  be  given  first  in  the  schools,  by  men 
teachers  to  boys  and  to  girls  by  married  women  teachers. 
It  will  have  to  be  given  first  in  the  schools  because  it  is  im- 
possible to  instruct  the  mothers  and  fathers  of  children 
how  to  tell  them  the  real  facts  of  sex,  both  because  they 
do  not  know  these  facts  and  because  there  is  an  uncon- 


SEXUALITY  IN  A  BROAD  SENSE        239 

sdous  cause  why  it  is  more  difficult  for  parents  to  talk 
to  their  own  children  about  such  matters.  Later,  when 
several  generations  of  children,  clear-eyed  in  their  view 
of  reproductive  and  productive  creation  and  the  rela- 
tions between  them,  have  had  children  of  their  own,  it 
may  be  possible  for  the  schools  to  leave  the  matter  in 
the  hands  of  parents.  At  present,  however,  it  is  amply 
manifest  that  parents  are  generally  incompetent  to  handle 
the  matter  themselves.  No  teacher  who  knows  fails  to 
see  in  almost  all  the  adolescent  children  under  his  care 
the  signs  of  unsatisfied  sexual  curiosity  in  their  actions 
and  in  their  attitude  toward  intellectual  matters. 

Sexuality  in  a  Broad  Sense 

Sexuality  in  the  broad  sense,  however,  has  to  be  con- 
sidered in  every  action  which  the  individual  performs,  and 
the  manner  in  which  he  relates  the  broadly  sexual  to  the 
specifically  genital  sexual  is  of  the  greatest  importance  to 
him  in  his  entire  philosophy  of  life.  The  sexual  ques- 
tions, both  in  the  broad  and  in  the  narrow  sense,  are 
pondered  by  each  boy  and  girl,  each  man  and  woman,  ac- 
cording to  their  nature  and  environment  and  their  experi- 
ence. There  is  no  human  being  who  is  not  either  a  man 
or  a  woman  or  destined  to  become  one,  and  the  problems 
of  sex  are  faced  by  each  and  every  one  of  us  in  his  or  her 
own  way.  Everyone  has  a  philosophy  of  life  based  on  his 
relation  to  the  life  which  he  bears  and  which  it  is  his  duty 
to  transmit.  Upon  the  proper  solution  of  these  problems 
depend  his  or  her  health  and  happiness.  They  form 
the  core  of  existence  and  the  root  of  all  good  and  evil. 
Mankind  has  with  consistent  errancy  averted  its  gaze 


240    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

from  the  essential  to  the  non-essential  under  the  impres- 
sion that  the  narrowly  sexual  would  take  care  of  itself 
if  only  the  externals  were  carefully  looked  after.  In 
many  cases,  therefore,  it  has  sedulously  watered  a  plant 
at  whose  root  was  a  cutworm  which  they  could  and  should 
but  would  not  see. 

Part  of  this  aversion  to  look  sexuality  squarely  in  the 
eye  comes  from  an  infantile  attitude  toward  the  parent. 
It  comes  about  in  two  ways  first  because  of  a  positive 
prohibition  on  the  father's  or  mother's  part.  They  tell 
the  child  not  to  think  of  such  subjects.  A  little  girl  is 
made  the  object  of  one  of  the  very  common  sexual  in- 
vestigations carried  on  by  children  in  their  unwatched 
hours  sometimes  before  their  fifth  year.  In  instinctive 
terror  she  runs  home  to  her  mother  and  begins  to  tell 
her  the  circumstances.  Her  mother  hushes  her  up  with 
"  Awful !  "  and  "  Unspeakable !  "  or  words  to  that  effect. 
The  little  girl  thinks  that  some  terrible  calamity  has 
befallen  her,  and  that  probably  she  is  disgraced  for  life. 
She  hangs  her  head  for  months  and  is  told  by  her  mother, 
who  is  ignorant  of  the  child  mind,  to  stand  up  straight 
and  act  better,  all  of  which  confirms  the  poor  child's 
suspicions  that  she  has  done  something  which  has  made 
It  impossible  for  her  ever  to  hold  up  her  head  properly. 
She  later  forgets  all  about  it,  voluntarily  represses  it 
from  her  consciousness  because  it  is  painful  to  her,  this 
Innocent  childish  incident  which,  if  explained  to  her  by 
a  sympathetic  and  intelligent  mother,  would  never  have 
so  depressed  her  for  so  long  a  time.  Eventually  she  suc- 
ceeds in  forgetting  it,  but  the  impression  it  made  upon 
her,  together  with  her  mother's  attitude  toward  it,  has 
left  an  imprint  on  her  psyche  which  makes  impossible  for 


THE  MOTHER-INFANT  ATTITUDE     241 

her  the  clear  gaze  at  reality  which  ought  to  be  the  right 
of  every  human.  Out  of  a  really  trivial  episode  the 
mother  made  an  intolerably  terrible  experience  for  the 
blameless  child  and  filled  her  mind  with  a  wholly  unjust 
sense  of  guilt  which  spoiled  her  forever  for  seeing  things 
as  they  really  are.  This  child  is  spiritually  in  much  the 
same  condition  as  the  babies  who,  through  carelessness 
or  ignorance  on  the  part  of  the  physician,  are  made  blind 
at  birth,  or  cripples,  and  ever  after  are  unable  to  see 
or  walk  as  the  case  may  be.  Such  a  permanent  twist  is 
given  very  frequently  in  the  earliest  childhood,  and  is 
manifested  sometimes  forty  or  fifty  years  later. 

The  Mother-Infant  Attitude 

Now  if  this  twist  is  existent  In  a  large  number  of  peo- 
ple, if  they  have,  we  shall  not  call  it  a  weakness  but  a 
twist  or  warp  which  is  going  to  run  the  wrong  way  of 
the  tension  some  day  just  because  the  grain  of  the  wood, 
so  to  speak,  crosses  the  oar  at  the  oarlock;  if  we  never 
know  what  sort  of  an  abyss  we  may  be  walking  near, 
we  are  in  a  condition  which  is  not  so  good  and  advanta- 
geous and  up-to-date  as  that  condition  would  be  where 
we  knew  just  how  we  stood.  For  if  we  knew  how  we 
stood,  we  should  be  In  a  position  to  take  steps  in  the 
right  direction.  Not  knowing  how  we  stand  is  very  much 
like  being  satisfied  to  leave  everything  to  fate.  If  we 
are  resigned  to  leave  everything  to  fate,  which  is  con- 
stituted for  most  of  us  by  external  reality,  we  are  like 
children  who  are  satisfied  to  take  everything  they  get 
from  the  mother  and  have  not  the  ideas  to  look  for  or 
require  more.     It  is  only  very  young  children  who  are 


242    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

thus  content,  in  fact  only  infants.  So  the  attitude  toward 
the  world  which  accepts  the  world  as  fate  is  an  exces- 
sively infantile  attitude.  It  is  only  through  an  active  pur- 
suit in  the  external  world  after  things  which  are  sug- 
gested by  internal  mental  activities,  that  we  leave  the 
Fate  Attitude  or  the  Mother-Infant  Attitude.  If,  in  other 
words,  we  are  convinced,  as  I  believe  every  thinking  per- 
son is,  that  there  is  any  knowledge  attainable  by  us,  which 
will  give  us  more  power  over  external  reality,  we  show 
immediately  our  adult  attitude  in  making  every  effort  to 
attain  that  knowledge. 

The  knowledge  of  the  unconscious  and  of  its  mechan- 
isms is  a  knowledge  which  gives  power  not  only  over  the 
external  world  but  the  mental,  and  gives  power  over  it 
solely  because  of  the  added  knowledge  which  it  gives 
us  of  ourselves,  our  nature,  our  abilities,  our  loves,  our 
hates,  likes,  dislikes,  mannerisms  and  modes  of  thought. 

Methods  More  Elastic 

With  the  change  of  front  on  the  part  of  the  teacher 
made  possible  by  the  newer  standpoint,  a  change  of  front 
from  the  group  to  the  individual,  will  come  a  very  great 
difference  in  the  rate  at  which  the  subject-matter  is 
covered.  It  will  be  possible  if  not  probable  that  a  student 
will  devote  more  time  consecutively  to  a  given  subject. 
It  is  characteristic  of  children  to  act  with  great  enthusiasm 
and  concentration,  when  once  their  interests  are  aroused. 
A  student  of  sixteen  just  said  to  me,  "  I  get  waked  up 
after  about  an  hour,"  meaning  that  she  became  thor- 
oughly interested  and  eager  to  go  on.  I  replied  that 
frequently  I  got  waked  up  myself,  after  an  hour  or  two, 


METHODS  MORE  ELASTIC  243 

to  a  state  of  activity  which  seemed  impossible  at  the 
beginning  of  any  bit  of  work. 

The  ringing  of  a  bell  in  a  recitation  room  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  breaks  off  a  great  deal  of  unconscious  ac- 
tivity which,  being  slow  in  getting  up  a  momentum,  is  in 
some  natures  jarred  by  a  sudden  coming  to  a  standstill 
or  a  shunting  off  on  another  track.  I  feel  sure  that  in 
the  schools  of  the  future  a  subject  will  be  studied  by  a 
student  intensively,  and  naturally  so,  until  a  point  is 
reached  where  a  solid  satisfaction  is  experienced  by  the 
student  over  a  good-sized  job  done  completely.  This 
may  take  a  whole  day  or  several  days.  I  see  no  reason 
why,  for  instance,  Latin  should  not  be  studied  in  high 
school  until  a  year's  work  is  finished,  say  in  ten  weeks, 
and  an  examination  taken.  Then  the  subject  could  be 
temporarily  dropped  in  favor  of  some  other.  In  this 
way  a  student  might  finish  off  first  and  get  credit  for 
subjects  that  were  easier  for  him  and  leave  the  harder 
ones  for  the  time  of  his  greater  maturity.  This  is  the 
more  reasonable  as  there  is  so  very  great  a  change  in 
the  mental  maturity  of  pupils  between  the  ages  of  thirteen 
and  seventeen. 

This  elastic  plan  would  allow  some  girls,  for  instance, 
who  on  entering  high  school  are  totally  unfit  for  mathe- 
matics to  postpone  them  until  their  fourth  year.  This 
is  the  year  in  which  a  great  many  pass  successfully  the 
work  of  the  first  year  in  mathematics,  which  however  they 
have  been  taking  term  after  term  and  failing  in.  They 
could,  indeed,  omit  the  study  of  mathematics  entirely,  if, 
and  only  if,  an  analysis  of  the  pupil  should  indicate  that 
she  was  a  case  of  utter  inability  to  master  mathematics. 
This  would  not  often  be  the  case,  because  the  careful 


244    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

analysis  by  the  teacher  would  reveal  and  remove  the 
causes  lying  in  the  unconscious  of  the  pupil,  causes  which 
make  the  mathematics  difficult.  It  would  then  be  not  dif- 
ficult, but  very  easy. 

It  has  been  found  that  young  people's  interest  in  or 
distaste  for  a  given  subject  is  often  conditioned  not  by 
any  innate  quality  of  their  mental  constitution  but  by 
their  attitude  toward  it,  which  has  been  determined  for 
them  by  some  early  impression  made  upon  them  by  a 
parent  or  brother  or  sister.  In  the  case  of  one  boy  on 
record  it  was  not  any  incapacity  of  his  own  which  ren- 
dered his  learning  of  scientific  subjects  almost  impossible, 
but  it  was  the  fact  that  his  father  had  excelled  in  that 
branch,  and  had  made  very  exacting  requirements  upon 
the  boy  to  do  very  well  in  that  subject,  and  was  inept 
enough  to  express  disappointment  in,  and  resentment  at, 
the  boy  for  not  showing  an  aptitude  for  them  at  once. 
How  many  special  teachers  know  whether  or  not  the  signal 
failures  of  a  pupil  to  do  well  in  their  subjects  are  caused 
by  some  home  influence  such  as  this?  No  discredit  to 
them,  to  be  sure,  for  not  knowing,  for  not  only  do  they 
lack  the  instrumentality  to  ascertain  but  they  also  have 
not  at  present  the  time  to  find  out.  Just  as  the  difficulty 
of  the  scientific  subjects  was  removed  for  the  boy  above 
mentioned  when  he  was  helped  to  understand  why  he 
could  not  do  well  in  that  subject,  so  in  the  future  will  any 
such  difficulty  be  removed  by  an  understanding  given  him 
by  his  adviser,  tracing  the  cause  of  this  difficulty.  A  dif- 
ficulty of  this  nature  is  almost  Invariably  the  result  of  an 
inhibition  on  the  part  of  the  boy  or  girl  caused  by  some 
fancied  relation  of  that  subject  to  their  father  or  mother. 
It  is  a  relation,  too,  that  is  generally  not  consciously  known 


SUMMARY  245 

to  the  pupil,  so  how  could  the  teacher,  not  knowing  any- 
thing of  the  unconscious,  or  the  pupil,  who  also  does  not 
know,  ever  find  out  and  illuminate  this  relation? 

Many  times  in  the  present  system  of  education  a  pupil 
fails  in  a  subject,  drops  it  and  takes  up  another  in  place 
of  it  because  he  fancies  the  other  will  be  "  easier."  How 
does  he  know  that  French  is  easier  than  Latin?  Is  it 
or  is  it  not?  He  does  not  know.  He  thinks  it  is,  and 
frequently  he  thinks  it  is,  because  his  mother  or  father 
want  him  to  study  Latin.  If  the  parent  advises  Latin, 
the  unconscious  antagonism  between  parent  and  child 
(which  exists  everywhere  and  involves  no  blame  to  either 
parent  or  child,  because  neither  knows  of  its  existence) 
makes  some  other  language  take  on  a  much  greater 
attractiveness,  partly  because,  not  being  the  parent's 
choice,  it  thereby  immediately  can  be  exclusively  the 
child's  choice.  This  conflict  is  partly  conscious,  partly 
unconscious,  in  varying  degrees  in  different  cases.  If  the 
subject  is  chosen  exclusively  by  the  child,  he  is  of  course 
consciously  or  unconsciously  on  his  own  mettle  to  do 
well  in  it,  and  all  the  more  so  if  there  is  some  opposition 
on  the  part  of  the  parent. 

Summary 

The  unconscious  unwillingness  of  pupils  to  do  school 
work  is  caused  by  the  early  impressions  received  from 
their  parents,  whose  influence,  due  to  pardonable  igno- 
rance, is  very  bad  for  the  later  welfare  of  their  children. 
The  parent  has  the  great  responsibility  of  creating  the 
mind  of  the  child,  a  process  which  must  be  maintained 
for  at  least  five  years  after  birth.     The  worst  influence 


246    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

exerted  by  the  parent  Is  a  failure  to  satisfy  the  child's 
inevitable  sex  curiosity.  The  effects  of  a  perverted 
handling  of  this  topic  or  a  refusal  to  treat  it  properly 
gives  a  twist  to  the  child's  understanding  not  only  of  the 
most  fundamental  human  relations  but  also  of  the  things 
of  the  world  apparently  most  remote  from  the  sexual. 
The  difference  between  directed  and  undirected  think- 
ing, showing  the  unconscious  wish  as  a  tension,  brings 
out  the  fact  that  all  humans  have  a  continuous  wish  or 
tension  toward  creation,  either  reproductive  or  produc- 
tive. The  occurrence  of  ideas  to  the  mind  is  discussed 
and  the  true  meaning  of  thoughtless  acts,  which  shows 
both  teacher  and  parent  a  more  scientific  attitude  with 
regard  to  attaching  blame  to  children.  The  question  of 
the  policy  of  trying  to  strengthen  what  parents  and 
teachers  consider  the  weak  points  of  the  child  is  discussed 
from  the  point  of  view  of  organ  inferiority.  The  un- 
fortunate trend  in  academic  education  to  date  has  been 
to  turn  the  child  away  from  reality.  Possible  reality  in 
the  child's  school  life  is  comparatively  small,  although 
the  advantages  of  an  early  acquaintance  with  it  would 
be  invaluable.  The  school  in  the  distant  future  may  be 
the  homes  of  the  people.  At  present,  however,  all  the 
teacher  can  do  is  to  reproduce  in  the  atmosphere  created 
by  him  in  the  schoolroom  as  much  as  possible  of  the 
quality  of  reality.  An  example  is  given  of  how  a  high- 
school  teacher  succeeded  in  reproducing  in  his  classroom 
some  of  the  extra-mural  social  environment  which  is  not 
found  in  many  schools. 

Some  of  the  specific  aims  of  education  from  the  point 
of  view  of  psychoanalysis  are  given :  to  alter  the  psy- 
chical environment,  to  amplify  consciousness,  to  remove 


SUMMARY  247 

unconscious  fear,  to  sublimate  the  unconscious  desires. 
The  function  of  the  teacher  of  the  future  will  not  be  to 
ask.  questions,  but  to  elicit  the  mental  activity  of  the 
child,  and  only  incidentally  to  straighten  out  misconcep- 
tions with  regard  to  sex.  The  attitude  of  the  person 
knowing  something  about  the  unconscious  and  not  striv- 
ing to  know  more  is  regarded  as  the  Fate  or  Mother- 
Infant  attitude.  A  greater  elasticity  will  be  available  in 
the  school  of  the  future,  whereby  a  pupil  will  be  enabled 
to  take  up  subjects  more  in  accordance  with  their  suita- 
bility to  his  stage  of  mental  development.  In  brief,  the 
aims  of  education  including  both  academic  education  and 
that  outside  of  schools,  are  first  to  separate  the  child  from 
himself,  in  such  way  that  he  can  exert  his  efforts  primarily 
to  effect  a  change  upon  the  world  of  external  reality, 
which  is  Indeed  the  best  way  in  which  to  effect  a  change 
upon  himself;  to  transmute  physical  energy  Into  psychical 
energy,  which  is  much  more  mobile  and  productive,  a 
phase  of  which  constitutes  sublimation;  to  unite  con- 
sciousness and  the  unconscious,  thereby  producing  the 
most  vigorous  personality,  making  everything  he  does 
most  intensely  personal.  The  net  result  of  all  these  aims 
will  be  the  uniting  of  the  child  again  with  reality,  but  In 
a  different  sense  from  that  in  which  he  was  united  with 
reality  at  birth.  It  is  pointed  out  in  various  places  how 
the  conscious  education  fails  to  unite  the  parts  of  the 
individual  personality. 


CHAPTER  VII 

RESISTANCE   AND   TRANSFERENCE 

The  attitude  of  children  toward  their  school  work  is 
an  index  both  of  conscious  and  of  unconscious  wishes. 
Some  children  are  unduly  downcast  by  failure  to  do  pass- 
ing work,  and  some  are  unduly  unmoved  by  their  fail- 
ures. Some  have  enough  density  of  psychical  epidermis, 
so  to  speak,  instinctively  to  make  due  allowance  for  the 
unconscious  conflicts  in  the  teacher's  own  personality,  and 
to  avoid  being  disturbed  by  what  the  teacher  says,  and 
also  to  take  advantage  of  the  teacher's  unconscious  con- 
flicts. In  the  latter  case  the  pupil  takes  a  pleasure  in 
making  the  teacher  unhappy,  just  as  he  naturally  takes 
pleasure  in  playing  on  the  emotions  of  his  elders  at  home 
and  of  the  chance  acquaintances  of  the  street.  The  street 
person,  however,  he  treats  with  a  certain  amount  of 
wariness  because  the  unknown  may  contain  unpleasant 
surprises  in  the  way  of  powerful  opposition  or  control. 
At  home  he  has  the  advantage  of  knowing  the  peculiari- 
ties of  his  relatives,  and  he  can  pull  the  same  old  strings 
repeatedly  with  great  success,  while  in  school  he  has  the 
advantage  of  being  shielded  by  numbers,  and  of  being 
able  to  act  in  a  concerted  attack  upon  the  enemy  repre- 
sentative of  authority.  This  is  the  normal  unconscious 
attitude  of  the  not  over-sadistic  healthy  individual,  and 
is  determined  by  his  unconscious  wishes. 

The  child,  on  the  other  hand,  who  takes  school  too 

248 


RESISTANCE  AND  TRANSFERENCE     249 

seriously,  who  spends  many  hours  on  the  preparation  of 
his  lessons,  even  if  they  are  hard,  is  one  who  has  not 
learned  the  chief  or  at  least  one  of  the  chief  lessons  which 
one  learns  at  the  present-day  school — namely,  the  art  of 
discounting  the  apparent  requirements  of  the  environ- 
ment. For  teachers  are  constantly  setting  tasks  which 
cannot  be  well  performed  by  the  majority  of  pupils,  work- 
ing as  they  do  against  the  great  resistances  which  are  in- 
evitable in  all  school  work.  These  resistances  are  un- 
known even  to  the  children  themselves.  The  children 
think  they  want  to  learn  and  will  honestly  say  that  they 
want  to  learn,  but  as  a  matter  of  pure  "  brass  tacks  " 
nobody  wants  to  learn  from  another  person,  even  from 
a  professional  teacher.  The  greater  the  authority  with 
^which  the  teacher  is  invested,  the  greater  will  be  the 
unconscious  resistance,  naturally  and  normally,  against  it. 
And  as  the  authority  with  which  the  teacher  is  upholstered 
increases  his  magnitude  in  his  own  eyes,  and  gives  a  pro- 
found satisfaction  to  one  of  his  strongest,  but  still  un- 
conscious, wishes,  his  acts  in  the  classroom  inevitably 
tend  toward  the  assertion  of  authority  and  to  the  idea 
that  his  aim  is  to  impress  upon  the  pupil  from  without 
a  body  of  information  which  will  increase  his  (the  pupil's) 
efficiency  ultimately  and  give  him  power  and  authority. 
If  the  teacher  is  not  keenly  aware  that  he  is  feeding  on 
unconscious  desire  in  making  the  pupils  do  what  he  thinks 
they  should,  he  runs  the  very  great  risk  of  giving  too 
great  an  emphasis  to  the  authoritative  element  in  his 
teaching. 


250    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Authoritative  Attitude  of  Teachers 

Another  very  great  incentive  to  the  teacher  to  be- 
come authoritative  is  due  to  the  fact  that,  in  a  sphere  in 
which  the  pupils  are  not  particularly  interested,  their  own 
unconscious  makes  them  see  many  difficulties  and  they 
crave  guidance  and  assistance.  This  may  seem  to  con- 
tradict the  statement  that  they  instinctively  resist  au- 
thority, but  it  is  really  no  contradiction.  For  the  au- 
thority which  they  resist  is  the  one  that  requires  them 
to  attend  to  subjects  which  do  not  primarily  appeal  to 
their  instincts.  The  very  existence  of  a  curriculum  and  a 
time-table  and  a  programme  and  the  ringing  of  bells, 
which  always  interrupt  when  interest  is  finally  aroused,  the 
very  nature  of  requirement  itself  is  one  that  creates  uncon- 
scious resistance  which  is  shown  in  tardiness,  in  absence, 
both  physical  manifestations,  and  also  in  inattention,  which 
is  the  psychical  manifestation  of  unconscious  resistance. 

One  Result  of  Resistance 

A  condition  which  results  from  this  unconscious  resist- 
ance is  that  it  is  practically  impossible  to  tell  anybody 
anything,  chiefly  for  the  reason  that  the  act  of  telling 
implies  a  superiority  on  the  part  of  the  teller,  which  has 
to  be  admitted  by  the  listener,  and  this  the  listener's  un- 
conscious is  quite  unable  to  admit.  The  only  way  in 
which  a  concrete  result  can  be  obtained — a  result  in  which 
there  is  any  dynamic  factor  having  an  influence  on  the 
actions  of  the  person  here  called  listener — is  the  indirect 
method  of  turning  the  listener  himself  into  a  teller,  a 
process  which  seems  completely  to  reverse  the  main  prin- 


THE  TRUE  QUESTION  251 

ciples  of  education  as  they  are  generally  practised.  The 
teacher  then  ostensibly  becomes  the  learner  and  the  pupil 
gives  information. 

The  True  Question 

The  art  of  teaching,  then,  consists  in  following  the  So- 
cratic  "  maieutic  "  method  of  developing  or  "  deliver- 
ing "  the  thoughts,  and  by  means  of  them  the  actions,  of 
the  pupil,  who  all  along  is  to  be  assured  that  he  is  im- 
parting information  *  which  the  teacher  is  sincerely 
desirous  of  knowing.  And  it  does  not  take  so  great  a 
transformation,  after  all,  on  the  part  of  the  teacher,  to 
make  him  feel  that,  by  listening  to  the  conscious  thoughts 
of  the  pupil,  he  can  soon  gain  a  leverage  on  the  pupil's  un- 
conscious thoughts,  after  he  has  discovered  what  they  are 
by  a  survey  of  their  manifestations  in  conscious  thought 
and  action.  In  this  way  he  can  influence  the  pupil  with- 
out the  pupil's  knowing  it,  an  influence  which  we  know  to 
be  all  the  more  potent  the  less  aware  of  it  the  pupil  is. 

*  I  do  not  refer  to  information  about  history  or  English  literature  or 
French  or  Spanish  or  mathematics.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  assert  the  in- 
sincerity of  the  statement  "  Now  I  want  to  know  "  or  "  I  want  you  to  tell 
me  about  "  this  or  that  topic  in  the  school  curriculum  is  an  insincerity 
which  is  always  immediately  sensed  by  the  pupil,  and  absolutely  vitiates 
any  educational  value  that  this  form  of  encounter  between  teacher  and 
pupil  is  supposed  to  have.  But  in  saying  that  the  teacher  is  to  receive  in- 
formation from  the  pupil,  I  mean  information  about  the  pupil's  own 
self,  the  conscious  elements  of  which  will  to  the  skilful  teacher  inevitably 
reveal  the  existence  and  form  of  the  unconscious  elements  of  which  the 
pupil  himself  has  not  the  remotest  knowledge.  In  this  way  school  and 
college  education  will  take  a  step  in  the  direction  of  real  penetrating 
analysis.  It  cannot  become  a  thorough  analysis,  for  the  reason  that  there 
will  not  be  time  enough  for  it,  but  it  will,  if  it  goes  any  distance  at  all, 
on  that  line,  be  an  infinite  advance  over  anything  that  is  being  done  today 
in  schools.    One  step  is  infinitely  greater  than  no  step  at  all. 


252    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

An  Important  corollary  of  this  principle  that  It  is  im- 
possible to  tell  anybody  anything  (except  In  the  case 
where  so  simple  and  impersonal  a  question  Is  asked  as 
"  What  time  Is  It?  "  or  "  What  was  the  thermometer  at 
three  this  afternoon?")  is  In  the  evident  futility  of  the 
teacher  doing  much  talking,  an  unfortunate  practice  which 
is  very  prevalent  In  schools.  The  unconscious  of  the  child 
is  soothed,  by  the  hypnotic  monotony  of  the  teacher's 
voice,  into  an  Inattentive  and  dreamy  state  most  con- 
ducive to  pure  undirected  thinking  or  phantasying.  The 
unconscious  of  the  teacher  is  enormously  gratified  by  the 
sense  of  power  which  Is  given  him  by  his  fluent  speech 
evidencing  his  mastery  of  his  "  subject."  In  the  schools 
of  the  future  the  subject  will  have  to  be  changed  for  the 
object,  the  child.  Then  the  child  will  become  fluent  and 
from  observation  of  the  teacher  may  himself  learn  when 
to  hold  his  own  tongue. 

One  reason  why  the  simple  question  as  to  matter  of 
fact,  e.g.  concerning  the  actual  time,  gives  the  oppor- 
tunity to  tell  a  person  something  Is  that  the  question  con- 
tains comparatively  much,  and  the  answer  contains  com- 
paratively little,  of  the  personal  element — the  unconscious 
element,  the  wish  element.  When  I  want  to  know  the 
time,  I  really  do  not  care  who  tells  me,  provided  I  get 
reasonably  correct  information  from  a  person  reasonably 
willing  to  give  it.  The  amount  of  wish-energy  put  forth 
and  satisfied  by  the  person  who  has  the  watch  or  can  see 
the  clock,  is  almost  infinitesimal  under  ordinary  condi- 
tions. A  glance  and  a  couple  of  words  and  his  perform- 
ance is  complete,  except  if  he  be  Infantile — either  a 
child  or  a  child-minded  adult.  If  he  is  a  small  boy  with 
his  first  watch,  he  may  develop  a  large  amount  of  wish- 


THE  TRUE  ANSWER  253 

energy  in  connection  with  his  answer,  or  if  it  is  a  girl 
who  has  any  interest  in  our  actions.  But  ordinarily  this 
piece  of  human  relationship  is  marked  by  a  large  amount 
of  wish-energy  in  the  one  person  and  a  very  small  amount 
in  the  other. 

I  take  this  to  be  a  type  of  the  relation  which  should 
exist  between  teacher  and  pupil.  In  it  the  person  asking 
the  time  represents  the  pupil  and  the  owner  of  the  time- 
piece the  teacher.  But  I  observe  that  the  relation  be- 
tween pupil  and  teacher  is  generally  quite  the  reverse. 
The  teacher,  and  particularly  one  who  is  "  full  of  his 
subject,"  will  talk  by  the  hour,  putting  his  material  year 
by  year  into  a  more  highly  organized  form  and  becoming 
a  better  and  better  expositor  or  "  putter-forth."  In  all 
of  this  progress  in  his  own  intellectual  development  he 
does  not  in  the  least  degree  reach  his  students  better.  He 
does  nothing  but  increase  his  own  fluency,  and  in  any 
grade  of  education  below  the  university,  increase  the 
breadth  of  his  own  knowledge. 

The  True  Answer 

Education  on  the  contrary  should  be  more  a  matter  of 
extraction  from  the  pupil  than  exposition  by  the  teacher. 
The  pupil  must  himself  acquire  the  knowledge.  Knowl- 
edge exposed  by  the  teacher  is  but  knowledge,  and,  as 
we  all  know  only  too  well,  extensively  unrelated  to  the 
wish-energy  of  the  pupil.  Knowledge  acquired  by  the 
pupil's  efforts  is  wisdom,  but  no  knowledge  is  acquired 
from  a  source  too  energetic.  One  cannot  get  a  drink 
from  a  high-pressure  fire  hose,  no  matter  how  thirsty 
one  is. 


254    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

A  true  teacher  therefore  is  necessarily  one  who  can 
give  the  brief  and  impersonal  answer  of  the  person  tell- 
ing the  time,  and  freed  entirely  from  any  wish-energy 
applied  directly  to  the  act  of  imparting  information.  But 
so  insidiously  does  the  teacher's  unconscious  control  his 
actions  that  he  is  constantly,  and  in  ignorance  of  the  true 
state  of  affairs,  satisfying,  before  the  audience  of  his 
classroom,  the  desire  for  self-exploitation,  a  very  natural 
one  to  be  sure,  and  characterizing  all  persons  but  most 
profitable  to  society  only  in  professional  entertainers. 

If  the  ideal  education  is  to  consist  of  a  drawing  out 
of  the  powers  of  the  child  with  the  aim  of  having  him  de- 
vote those  energies  to  effecting  a  change,  not  in  himself, 
but  in  the  external  world,  the  question  arises  of  the  means 
and  the  method  for  developing  in  the  child  the  desire  to 
work  upon  that  portion  of  the  external  world  chosen  by 
the  framers  of  the  curriculum.  For  children  do  not  in- 
stinctively give  up  the  undirected  thinking  (day-dreaming 
or  phantasying)  which  is  the  easy,  because  internal,  man- 
ner of  satisfying  their  unconscious  wishes,  and  substitute 
for  it  the  mode  of  thinking  directed  toward  the  world  of 
reality,  which  Is  a  difficult  mode  because  it  requires  an 
effort  physically  expended  upon  the  reality  of  the  world 
external  to  himself. 

This  applies  most  closely,  of  course,  to  the  abstract 
and  so-called  cultural  subjects  in  the  curriculum.  If  we 
are  to  have  the  student  really  satisfying  a  real  desire  in 
getting  an  education,  that  desire  must  be  satisfied  not  only 
at  the  end  of  a  part  of  it  as  when  he  receives  a  school 
diploma  or  a  college  or  university  degree,  but  must  be  sat- 
isfied moment  by  moment  during  the  progress  of  his  work. 
Every   bit   of   information   he    gets    from   the   teacher 


TENSION  AND  RELAXATION  255 

must  be  gotten  for  the  purpose  of  satisfying  a  bit  of 
desire,  and  we  know  how  infrequently  that  is  the  case  in 
the  schools  of  the  present,  where  the  teacher,  called  also 
instructor  (or  he  that  piles  upon),  is  largely  a  task- 
master or  slave  driver,  necessarily  on  account  of  the  de- 
mands of  the  syllabus. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  that  the  information  must 
be,  for  its  best  effect  upon  the  soul  of  the  student,  gotten 
in  the  heat  of  desire,  for  only  then  is  it  fused  so  that 
it  becomes  a  vital  part  of  his  unconscious  mentality. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  every  impression  made  upon  any 
sentient  being  is  retained  forever.  All  the  lessons  and 
tasks  of  school,  all  the  lectures  and  essays  of  college 
are  permanently  stored  in  the  unconscious,  but  they  have 
never  been  vitalized  because  they  were  passively  received, 
and  not  actively  acquired.  This  is  clear  when  we  reflect 
that  the  rhythm  of  tension  and  relaxation,  which  con- 
stitutes the  actual  dynamics  of  psychical  life,  is  the  funda- 
mental mechanism  by  which  the  psyche  develops,  exactly 
as  metabolism  is  a  rhythm  of  anabolism  and  catabolism 
in  animal  physiology. 

Constant  Tension  and  Relaxation 

The  unconscious  tensions  or  wishes  of  the  human  In- 
dividual are  from  minute  to  minute  relaxed  and  tensed. 
This  rhythm  of  tension  or  wish  and  relaxation  or  grati- 
fication goes  on  from  moment  to  moment  in  the  mental 
(as  well  as  in  the  physical)  life  of  each  one  of  us.  It  Is 
going  on  with  the  regularity,  if  not  with  the  rapidity,  of 
the  heart  beat,  in  every  child  in  every  classroom.  In 
those  students  who  get  the  most  out  of  their  school  educa- 


256    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

tion  the  desire  and  its  gratification  are  centred  in  the  sub- 
ject-matter of  the  course  they  are  pursuing  or  else  in  the 
attitude  of  themselves  to  their  teachers  or  in  that  of  their 
teachers  to  them.  Such  students,  dubbed  grinds  by 
others,  are  not  always  the  best  men  and  women.  Very 
frequently  they  are  a  great  disappointment  after  they 
have  graduated,  and  can  succeed  in  life  only  as  per- 
petuators  of  the  same  system  of  education  in  which  they 
were  brought  up.  They  become  teachers  themselves 
(who  ever  heard  of  a  successful  teacher  who  felt  con- 
tempt for  the  subject  he  was  teaching?)  and  they  strive 
to  put  their  pupils  through  the  same  pattern  which 
stamped  themselves.  Having  been  themselves  stencilled, 
they  naturally  think  everybody  else  ought  to  be  stencilled, 
and  with  the  same  shapes. 

But  there  are  others  whose  instincts  or  unconscious 
wishes  cannot  be  satisfied  with  the  material  which  is  of- 
fered them  in  the  schools.  Why  they  cannot  remains  a 
problem  yet  to  be  discussed.  With  book  geography,  with 
spelling,  with  English  compositions,  Latin,  algebra  and 
what  not,  they  cannot  ally  their  unconscious  wishes. 
Their  conscious  wishes  they  do  so  affiliate  with  the  educa- 
tional topics  selected  for  them  by  their  elders,  and  they 
pretend  to  a  desire  for  book  learning  partly  because  of 
the  social  status  given  to  it. 

But  during  every  minute  of  their  existence  in  any  edu- 
cational institution,  just  as  much  as  when  they  are  out 
of  it,  all  students  are  forming  and  satisfying  desires,  un- 
conscious ones  mainly.  And  the  rhythm  of  tension  and 
relaxation,  of  desire  and  gratification,  goes  on  constantly. 
It  expresses  the  most  vital  factor  in  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual.   Those  who  say  (and  show)  that  they  have  no 


TENSION  AND  RELAXATION  257 

conscious  desires,  the  listless  ones,  are  the  ones  whose 
desires  are  all  unconscious,  either  repressed  or  not  yet 
manifested.  All  people  however  constantly  have  desire, 
and  whether  it  is  conscious  or  unconscious  depends 
largely  upon  their  environment.  If  their  surroundings 
have  been  such  as  to  repress  their  instinctive  desires  that 
have  emerged  from  time  to  time  (Johnny  mustn't  do 
THAT!)  and  they  have  not  been  able  to  substitute  ac- 
ceptable desires  and  gratifications  for  the  prohibited 
ones,  then  the  desires  are  mostly  unconscious  and  the  in- 
dividuals so  hampered  are  more  or  less  in  the  condition 
of  manacled  slaves,  or  imprisoned  felons.  What  is  the 
history  of  the  vital  rhythm  of  desire  and  satisfaction,  of 
wish  and  fulfilment  in  these  persons? 

Let  it  be  remembered  that  as  a  wish  is  actually  a 
material  physical  tension  in  muscles  of  the  living  human 
body  and  as  only  the  relaxation  of  the  tension  is  the  satis- 
faction of  that  wish,  it  is  a  physical  impossibility  that 
any  wish  should  remain  ungratified.  In  other  words 
every  human  desire  is  thus  always  being  fulfilled  in  one 
way  or  another.  There  is  no  tension  which  during  life 
is  not  relaxed,  to  make  way  for  another  tension,  just 
as  there  is  no  life  consisting  of  pure  inactivity  or  ab- 
solute relaxation.  Even  in  a  hibernating  animal,  changes 
take  place  which  are  manifested  on  his  reappearance  in 
the  spring.     The  absolutely  relaxed  is  actually  dead. 

If  every  human  wish  is  fulfilled  in  some  way,  it  is  quite 
evident  that  if  it  is  not  consciously  fulfilled  it  must  be  un- 
consciously. The  unconscious  of  each  and  every  individ- 
ual is  an  unlimited  store  of  material  for  wish  fulfilment. 
The  very  act  of  relaxation,  even  that  coming  through 
fatigue,  is  a  fulfilment  of  a  wish  in  so  far  as  it  is  the 


258    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

relaxation  of  a  tension.  And  as  the  tensions  will  relax, 
even  though  the  intended  gratification  is  not  actually  se- 
cured, we  find  ourselves,  possessed  as  we  are  with  a 
faculty  of  mental  reproduction  of  sensations,  deriving 
our  satisfactions  from  ideal,  imaginary  internal  sources, 
instead  of  the  external  ones  which  have  disappointed  us. 
That  is  what  takes  place  every  day  in  every  school- 
room. The  unconscious  wishes  of  the  child,  denied  an 
actual  external  gratification,  inevitably  seek  and  find  an 
internal  one.  That  is  what  is  going  on  before  your  eyes, 
Mr.  and  Miss  Teacher  and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Parent,  every 
day  of  your  life.  For  the  solution  of  the  problem  of 
what  to  do  with  and  even  how  to  get  hold  of  the  un- 
conscious wishes  of  the  student  has  not  up  to  the 
present  time  had  any  light  thrown  on  it.  In  fact,  the 
problem  as  such  has  not  been  presented  at  all.  Educa- 
tion has  treated  the  student  as  a  being  all  conscious  and 
no  part  unconscious.  In  so  doing  it  has  disregarded  the 
most  essential  point  and  its  problems  so  far  have  been 
merely  superficial  and  the  solutions  nugatory. 

Teachers  Commonly  Ignorant  of  Wish  Rhythm 

This,  then,  is  the  real  problem  of  education.  If  we  are 
to  educate,  we  must  know  what  we  have  to  educate.  If 
we  are  ourselves  going  to  effect  a  result  on  a  part  of 
external  reality  (our  pupils),  we  have  to  know  something 
about  it.  As  educators  we  seem  to  have  had  the  idea  that 
we  wanted  a  child's  pale  face  to  be  red  or  green,  and  to 
have  laid  on  thick  coats  of  red  paint  or  green,  and  to  have 
wondered  why  they  did  not  sink  into  and  become  a  part 
of  his  tissue,  not  knowing  that  the  only  way  to  give  him 


IGNORANCE  OF  WISH  RHYTHM       259 

red  cheeks  is  to  let  him  exercise  his  own  muscles.  We 
thought  his  face  was  pale !  Possibly  the  paleness  was  in 
our  own  vision.  Healthy  children,  not  aligned  and  rigidi- 
fied  by  school  furniture,  are  red-cheeked  anyway.  If  we 
are  to  help  Nature  we  must  know  something  about  her. 
If  we  wish,  and  think  we  have  a  right,  to  change  human 
nature,  we  must  know  it  as  anatomists  know  the  human 
body,  as  osteologists,  as  histologists,  as  cytologists.  We 
must  have  a  more  accurate  knowledge  of  psychical  ana- 
tomy and  histology.  There  is  such  a  knowledge,  the 
beginnings  of  which  took  place  at  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  and  which  is  making  great  advances  today. 
As  teachers  we  must  learn  and  avail  ourselves  of  the 
mechanisms  of  the  unconscious  mentality.  We  shall  not 
feel  the  necessity  of  learning  about  them,  if  we  do  not 
know  their  existence,  but,  once  our  attention  is  called 
to  them,  we  cannot  fail  to  see  them,  as  they  are  always 
there,  functioning  before  our  eyes.  They  have  been  vis- 
ible but  unseen  forever,  like  any  other  obvious  thing  such 
as  the  air,  whose  chemical  constituents  are  not  an  object 
of  visual  sensation  and  can  never  become  so,  but  whose 
existence  is  a  necessary  postulate  of  chemical  science,  in 
explaining  phenomena  which  are  visible.  Similarly  we 
explain  by  things  inaudible  those  which  are  audible,  and 
in  general  we  explain  and  understand  the  perceptible  by 
means  of  things  imperceptible.  Thus  do  we  explain  con- 
scious thought  and  act  by  means  of  the  unconscious  and 
its  modes  of  functioning,  which  are,  to  be  sure,  somewhat 
different  from  the  conscious,  and  have  to  be  learned  just 
as  conscious  processes  can  be  learned  (the  various  arts), 
but  they  are,  although  different,  yet  subject  to  the  same 
natural  laws  as  conscious  mental  processes. 


26o    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

If  some  knowledge  is  necessary  for  a  physician  to  set 
a  broken  limb,  surely  as  much  knowledge  as  possible  is 
advantageous  for  the  teacher  to  set  or  reduce  a  broken 
disposition.  In  school  children  most  broken  dispositions 
are  broken  before  they  come  to  school  and  the  teacher's 
duty,  hitherto  conceived  to  be  but  the  dressing  up  of 
broken  limbs  in  silks  and  laces,  which  only  serve  to  dis- 
guise deformities,  is  really  to  strip  off,  at  present  to 
ignore,  what  uncouth  sartorial  integuments  he  finds  on 
his  pupils  and  pay  sole  attention  to  the  reshaping  of  their 
badly  deformed  mental  physique. 

If  as  teachers  we  were  required  to  know  nothing  ex- 
cept the  nature  of  the  veneer  we  attempt  to  apply,  we 
should  neither  be  interested  in,  nor  know  of  the  existence 
of,  the  bodies  over  which  we  plastered  our  thin  films. 
But  the  moment  we  begin  to  believe  that  our  concern  is 
with  the  organism,  whose  color  only,  so  to  speak,  we 
were  formerly  interested  in,  we  become  mental  physicians 
instead  of  mental  tailors. 


Blindness  of  Humanity  to  Inner  Wish  Life 

It  will  be  admitted  that  humanity  has  been  ostensibly 
more  interested  in  the  coverings  of  the  body  than  in  the 
body  itself,  and  that  just  as  it  required  a  thousand  years, 
more  or  less,  for  physicians  as  a  profession  to  have  any 
social  position,  so  it  will  require  some  time  for  a  teacher 
who  knows  as  much  about  the  mind  as  a  medical  man 
does  about  the  body  to  gain  repute  for  his  knowledge 
and  honor  for  his  profession.  There  has  always  been  as 
much  disinclination  on  the  part  of  humanity  in  general  to 
have  the  real  nature  of  its  soul  examined  as  there  has 


BLINDNESS  TO  INNER  WISH  LIFE      261 

been  reluctance  on  the  part  of  individual  humans  to  have 
their  bodies  investigated.  There  is  so-called  modesty  and 
fear  in  both  cases.  Knowledge,  and  particularly  self- 
knowledge,  has  been  too  terrible  for  most  minds.  Many 
persons  would  be  as  unwilling  to  look  into  their  own 
minds  as  into  their  own  brain  fissures,  and  possibly  for 
the  majority  of  people  either  of  these  is  quite  unnecessary. 
But  for  the  teacher,  who  is  to  act  in  some  sort  anal- 
ogously to  the  physician,  a  knowledge  of,  and  an  ability 
to  see  the  undraped  workings  of  the  mind  is  a  necessity. 

That  the  educator  has  not  had  this  intimate  knowledge 
has  not  been  his  fault,  for  until  lately  nobody  has  had  it. 
Until  the  time  of  the  psychology  of  the  unconscious  wish, 
originated  by  Sigmund  Freud  and  the  different  schools 
which  have  already  developed  in  more  or  less  divergent 
lines  from  his  teachings,  the  unconscious,  as  a  medium 
over  which  some  control  could  be  exercised  by  conscious 
effort,  had  been  neither  recognized  nor  investigated.  It 
is  Freud's  use  of  his  knowledge  of  the  unconscious  in 
the  cure  of  hysteria  and  some  other  nervous  diseases 
which  has  been  extended  from  abnormal  to  normal  psy- 
chology and  has  given  a  point  of  view  from  which  much 
more  can  be  learned  of  the  human  psyche  than  ever  be- 
fore. 

Now  we  are  beginning  to  have  this  vast  and  unex- 
plored mental  hinterland  (to  use  H.  G.  Wells'  expres- 
sion) provisionally  charted,  we  are  able  to  look  forward 
to  a  time  when  its  inconceivably  vast  treasures  will  be 
available  for  more  and  more  persons.  Educators  should 
be  among  the  first  to  explore  this  hinterland  as  the  physio- 
graphical  conditions  of  it  so  constantly  affect  the  climate 
of  the  coastal  consciousness.    Furthermore,  human  enter- 


262     THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

prise  is  gradually  more  and  more  opening  up  this  hinter- 
land of  the  mind,  whose  geological  strata  have  been  laid 
down  during  the  eons  of  time  during  which  consciousness 
has  evolved  out  of  inanimate  matter. 

Every  teacher  is  aware,  while  facing  a  roomful  of 
lively  children,  that  he  is  "  up  against "  a  collection  of 
wills,  but  now  the  knowledge  comes  that  these  variegated 
volitions  are  not  merely  conscious  purposes,  but  are  un- 
conscious wishes  and  that  all  of  them  are  being  fulfilled 
continuously  in  his  very  presence.  There  are  no  disap- 
pointments and  frustrations  except  the  conscious  ones. 
Every  unconscious  wish  struggles  up  toward  the  surface 
of  consciousness,  and  if  repressed  or  inhibited,  as  most 
of  them  are,  by  the  teacher,  they  are  Immediately  satis- 
fied in  the  unconscious  either  by  a  perceptible  movement 
or  by  a  thought.  The  substitute  satisfaction  is  always 
taken  in  place  of  the  one  originally  intended.  We  desire 
to  breathe  air.  If  we  are  put  in  situations  where  we 
breathe  gas  or  chloroform  or  ether  or  water,  breathing 
movements  go  on  just  the  same  as  long  as  the  organism 
lives.  The  satisfaction  of  the  unconscious  wish  is  just 
as  instinctive  and  inevitable  as  that. 

The  marks  made  with  knives  and  pencils  on  school 
furniture  or  walls,  the  drawings  and  irrelevant  words  on 
the  pages  of  school-books,  the  dog's-ears,  the  blots,  the 
numerous  traces  of  activity  misdirected  are  all  evidences 
of  the  substitute  satisfactions  of  the  unconscious  wishes 
working  through  the  conscious  ones.  The  uneasiness,  the 
antagonism,  the  slam.ming  of  books  and  occasional  drop- 
ping of  things  on  the  floor,  the  surreptitious  eating  of 
a  bite  of  lunch  and  the  chewing  of  gum  are  all  attempts  of 
the  unconscious  to  gain  its  own  satisfaction  in  spite  of  the 


BLINDNESS  TO  INNER  WISH  LIFE      263 

restrictions  put  upon  It  by  consciousness.  The  conscious 
wrangling  of  pupils  with  each  other,  and,  where  possible, 
with  the  teacher,  are  manifestations  of  the  unconscious 
wish,  sometimes  a  wish  to  exhibit,  sometimes  a  generic 
wish  for  power.  The  attitude  of  mild  or  severe  dislike 
of  lessons  or  the  apparent  Indifference,  all  these  more  un- 
desirable expressions  are  expressions  of  the  same  uncon- 
scious. 

There  are  desirable  ones  too.  Every  cheerful  compli- 
ance on  the  part  of  the  learner  with  the  suggestions  of 
the  director  of  the  learning,  every  thoughtful  act  of  ser- 
vice done  by  the  pupil  for  the  teacher  or  the  school  is 
quite  as  much  prompted  by  the  unconscious  as  are  the 
bad  ones.  I  do  not  wish  to  give  the  unconscious  an  unduly 
black  eye.  By  virtue  of  its  enormous  and  unfailing  power 
It  can  suggest  and  carry  out  really  magnificent  deeds, 
when  at  the  same  time  its  love  of  exhibition  and  mastery 
can  be  satisfied  In  doing  them.  The  quickness  with  which 
the  most  unruly  boys  will  rise  to  fine  action  in  an  emer- 
gency, the  alacrity  with  which  a  nation  goes  to  war,  show 
the  unconscious  and  the  conscious  life  working  together. 

The  actions  of  young  people  are  more  impulsive  than 
those  of  older  people  because,  as  the  older  psychology 
would  say,  they  are  more  instinctive  and  less  reasoned. 
The  newer  psychology  finds  that  instinct  is  the  expression 
of  the  unconscious  wishes  and  that  they  may  sometimes 
in  one  action  be  at  variance  with  reason  and  at  other  times 
in  other  actions  coincide  with  reason.  But  this  coincidence 
is  rarer  In  youth  than  In  later  life  and  the  actions  of  the 
young  are  therefore  more  "  scatter-brained  "  and  have 
less  congruence  with  a  social  system  than  those  of  per- 
sons who  have  spent  half  a  century  or  so  In  repressing, 


264    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND       ~ 

and  finding,  by  the  trial  and  error  method,  substitute 
satisfactions. 


Unconscious  Wishes  Expressed  in  Idle  Questions 

Other  examples  of  the  unconscious  wish  fulfilment  that 
Is  taking  place  every  minute  of  every  hour  in  the  school- 
room are  the  foolish  or  perverse  questions  which  are  con- 
tinually asked.  I  do  not  refer  specially  to  the  oft- 
repeated  question:  "What  was  /  doing?",  although  the 
form  of  it  shows  the  unconscious  unwillingness  on  the  part 
of  the  pupil  to  judge  his  own  acts  according  to  the  con- 
ventional standards  of  the  school.  I  refer  here  not  to 
the  questions  which  are  asked  about  what  page  of  the 
book  the  lesson  is,  or  another  kind  of  question  which 
shows  not  a  real  difficulty  and  a  desire  to  overcome  it,  a 
variety  of  question  which  is  asked  not  in  the  recitation 
time  but  at  the  end  of  the  school  day  or  in  a  study  period. 
I  refer  to  a  kind  of  question  which,  though  ostensibly  a 
sincere  question  for  the  purpose  of  gaining  information,  is 
asked  for  one  or  the  other  of  two  reasons.  First,  a  child 
will  ask  a  question  designed  to  get  the  teacher  started  on 
a  lecture  during  which  most  of  the  class  may  read  some 
story  book  or  magazine  or  look  out  of  the  window.  The 
real  nature  of  such  a  question  is  that  of  a  protective  mea- 
sure, to  keep  the  teacher  from  asking  questions.  The 
second  is  on  the  face  of  it  absolutely  sincere  and  even 
may  be  asked  of  the  teacher  privately,  but  nevertheless  is 
a  sign  of  resistance  against  instruction.  The  pupil  is  him- 
self in  this  case  unaware  of  his  own  resistance  to  taking 
knowledge  in  the  place  of  getting  wisdom.  He  really 
thinks  he  has  a  difficulty  and  sincerely  feels  that  he  desires 


WISHES  IN  IDLE  QUESTIONS  265 

to  overcome  it.  But  a  little  analysis  will  show  that  it 
contains  a  wish  to  put  the  burden  of  the  work  on  the 
teacher  instead  of  shouldering  it  himself. 

This  produces  an  unsatisfactory  situation;  for  the 
teacher  knows  that  to  tell  him  what  he  consciously  wants 
will  not  strengthen  him  but  weaken  him,  and  at  the  same 
time  that  to  show  him  that  his  difficulty  is  one  of  his  own 
making  and  unconscious  wishing  will  put  before  him  a 
conflict  in  which  he  will  be  quite  unwilling  to  engage. 
Here,  of  course,  the  artless  teacher,  not  reading  the  un- 
conscious element  of  the  pupil's  situation,  will  give  a  long 
and  painstaking  explanation.  The  pupil  will  be  gratified 
by  seeing  the  teacher  work  so  hard  for  him,  but  will  not, 
of  course,  realize  that  the  teacher  is  doing  all  the  work 
and  himself  none,  and,  when  a  similar  problem  occurs 
again,  the  pupil  will  be  little  if  any  better  able  to  solve  it 
tiian  he  was  at  first.  He  will  give  it  up  then  as  a  bad 
job,  conclude  that  he  has  a  special  unfitness  for  that  kind 
of  problem  and  will  hate  it  forever  after,  for  he  has,  in 
his  unconscious,  come  in  close  comparison  with  one  who 
could  do  it  a  great  deal  better,  and  evidently  took  plea- 
sure in  demonstrating  this  power,  while  the  pupil  himself 
was  inactive  and  unable  to  do  a  triumphant  piece  of  work 
with  it.  His  unconscious  is  tortured  with  a  feeling  of  im- 
potence and  of  envy  of  the  teacher's  superiority.  If  only 
a  teacher's  unconscious  would  let  the  teacher  say  some- 
times that  the  teacher  did  not  know !  There  might  then 
be  aroused  a  real  emulation  on  the  pupil's  part  to  find 
out  for  himself. 

The  skilful  teacher,  on  the  other  hand,  will  find  out 
what  are  the  real  reasons  for  the  pupil's  being  unable  to 
fight  out  this  battle  for  himself.    His  being  unable  to  do 


266    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

it  is  of  course  not  a  true  statement  of  fact.  There  are 
no  students,  or  at  most  only  a  very  few,  who  are  really 
unable  to  do  the  work  even  of  the  wooden  and  senseless 
curricula  now  prevalent  in  schools.  The  inability  is  only 
fancied  or  phantasied,  that  is,  wished  for.  The  pupil 
really  does  not  want  to  do  that  kind  of  work.  He  does 
not  himself  know  that  he  does  not  wish  it.  The  wish  in 
most  of  these  cases  is  an  utterly  unconscious  wish.  There 
may  be  even,  and  frequently  is,  a  very  strong  compen- 
satory conscious  wish  to  do  the  work,  or  at  any  rate  to 
get  the  reward  for  having  done  it,  but  interest  in  the  work 
itself  there  is  none. 

When  I  say  that  the  inability  to  do  the  work  is  only 
fancied,  that  is,  wished  for,  I  am  implying  a  general 
identity  between  ideas  and  wishes.*  There  is  in  some 
pupils  a  strong  masochistic  tendency  (see  page  98)  which 
leads  them  unconsciously  to  make  themselves  as  miserable 
as  possible  over  anything  hard,  being  led  thereto  possibly 
by  one  or  other  masochistic  parent,  who  takes  pleasure 
similarly  in  bewailing  the  misery  of  human  existence. 
The  masochistic  pupil  will  always  look  for  and  find  diffi- 
culties and  injustice  where  there  is  really  none.  He  wants 
to  be  miserable,  unconsciously  of  course,  and  finds  ample 
opportunity  in  school. 

*  In  general  there  is  an  absolute  identity  between  a  wish  and  an  idea 
in  one  direction  only.  All  ideas  are  wishes,  but  all  wishes  are  not  ideas. 
Perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  say  that  all  ideas  are  the  conscious  ele- 
ments of  unconscious  wishes,  or  that  there  is  an  unconscious  wish  as  the 
cause  of  every  idea  which  comes  into  one's  head.  Ideas  of  misfortune  are 
no  exception  to  this  rule.  That  the  wish  is  the  father  of  the  thought 
means  just  this:  that  no  thought  would  occur  to  the  mind  that  did  not 
gain  from  the  wish  the  motive  power  that  drives  it  into  consciousness. 
The  very  existence  of  an  idea  in  one's  mind  is  proof  positive  that  there 
is  a  strong  unconscious  wish  at  the  bottom  of  it.  The  idea  would  not 
have  been  vitalized,  so  to  speak,  without  the  dynamic  force  of  the  wish 
it  contains. 


RESISTANCE  IN  THE  CLASSROOM      267 

Resistance  in  the  Classroom 

The  phenomena  of  resistance  to  authority  are  seen  in 
the  actions  of  both  teachers  and  children  in  school.  The 
teachers  forget  the  directions  of  the  principal  and  the 
children  forget  the  teachers'  words,  not  only  the  com- 
mands, but  also  the  words  of  instruction.  This  forgetting 
of  the  teachers'  words  on  the  part  of  the  pupil  is  not  be- 
cause of  any  inherent  inability  to  remember  them,  be- 
cause retentiveness  as  a  material  quality  is  uniforn^  in  all 
persons,  but  because  of  the  inherent  nature  of  the  rela- 
tion between  pupil  and  teacher.  The  teacher,  due  partly 
to  the  compulsory  education  law,  where  that  is  in  opera- 
tion, stands  in  a  false  relation  to  the  pupil,  i.e.  a  relation 
which  arouses  all  the  unconscious  antagonism  of  the 
pupil.  And  that  is  why  the  problems  of  interest  and  at- 
tention and  discipline  are  so  puzzling.  It  is  partly  be- 
cause the  pupil  does  things  all  the  time,  prompted  by  the 
instinctive  unconscious,  and  the  teacher,  with  the  usual 
rhetorical  questions,  asks  fVhy  have  you  done  this?  as 
if  the  teacher  thought  that  the  pupil  could  answer  this 
question.  It  is  perhaps  a  sincere  thought  on  the  part  of 
some  inexperienced  and  unreflecting  teachers,  but  others 
must  realize  that  the  question  is  not  really  a  legitimate 
one;  not  that  there  is  no  answer  to  it,  but  because  the 
answer  is  impossible  for  all  pupils  and  for  most  teachers. 

The  best  attitude  for  the  teacher  to  take  is  that  which 
frankly  implies  that  a  certain  number  of  acts  have  to  be 
done,  with  the  appearance  of  having  to  be  done  under 
authority  at  the  command  of  a  person  who  is  supposed 
to  be  in  authority. 

How  resistance   against  self-knowledge   obscures  the 


268    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

judgment  is  Illustrated  by  the  following  confession  of  a 
male  high  school  teacher  concerning  the  real  causes  of  his 
giving  more  than  the  usual  amount  of  attention  to  two 
girls,  attractive,  but  not  good  students : 

"  On  my  way  home  from  school  after  a  seance  with 
Miss  X  I  reflected  that  I  had  possibly  tried  too  openly 
to  arouse  her  enthusiasm  for  her  Latin,  because  her  phys- 
ical attractions  had  made  such  a  reaction  on  my  own 
unconscious.  I  had  also  taken  the  trouble  to  look  up  an- 
other very  pretty  girl  to  reprimand  her  for  some  irregu- 
larity in  her  classroom  behaviour.  I  saw  in  these  two  facts 
the  working  of  my  unconscious  desires  and  recalled  that 
I  had  rationalized  my  acts  at  the  time,  giving  as  a  reason 
for  summoning  Miss  Y  to  my  room  not  her  pretty  face 
with  light  hair  and  brown  eyes,  but  the  fact  that  she  had 
given  her  place  card  to  a  boy  to  hand  in  and  had  gone 
up  half  a  dozen  points  in  so  doing.  I  saw,  as  I  walked 
home,  the  unconscious  motives  of  both  acts — the  warming 
up  about  Latin  with  the  one  girl  and  the  authoritative 
inquisition  in  the  case  of  the  other — and  I  realized  as 
never  before  that  I  had  been  completely  dominated  in 
my  choice  of  actions  by  virtually  sexual  motives.  Further- 
more, as  I  saw,  after  I  had  left  the  school  building,  that 
I  would  have  given  the  wrong  reason  (had  I  been  asked 
while  I  was  doing  those  acts),  instead  of  the  true  cause, 
so  I  realized  that  no  person  can  possibly  give  the  true 
cause  for  his  acts,  because  it  is  hidden  from  him,  and  be- 
cause, during  the  act,  when  he  is  most  conscious  of  what 
he  is  doing,  he  is  most  unconscious  of  the  real  causes  of 
what  he  is  doing  and  so  of  the  true  significance  of  his  acts. 
What,  then,  is  the  real  meaning  of  any  act?  A  real  knowl- 
edge of  one's  unconscious  can  come  only  through  a  second 


RESISTANCE  IN  THE  MARKET         269 

person  or  from  a  second  consideration  of  the  act  by  the 
same  person  when  he  is  in  a  different  frame  of  mind,  and 
is  in  a  sense  a  different  personality.  The  side  lights  on 
one's  own  character  afforded  by  the  remarks  of  another 
person,  or  even  by  the  later  study  of  one's  own  acts  at  a 
time  removed  from  the  heat  of  action,  necessarily  meet 
with  a  resistance  directly  in  proportion  to  their  truth, 
which  must  be  painful  and  therefore  repelled." 

Resistance  in  the  Market 

Another  illustration  of  resistance  is  that  of  having  a 
smaller  coin  returned  in  change  under  and  obscured  by,  a 
larger  one,  so  that  when  one  looks  in  one's  hand  one  sees 
only  the  larger  one,  and,  missing  the  smaller  one  neces- 
sary to  make  up  the  amount,  one  begins  to  suspect  less 
change  is  being  handed  out  than  is  due.  This  is  a  very 
prettily  disguised  bit  of  resistance  on  the  part  of  the 
person  making  the  change,  because  the  change  is  all  there 
and  the  salesman  is  just  waiting  for  the  purchaser  to  make 
an  objection,  which  of  course  will  be  senseless.  This  will 
give  the  salesman  a  situation  of  superiority  or  at  any  rate 
that  kind  of  superiority  which  comes  from  being  wronged 
or  unjustly  accused  by  another.  His  remark  to  the  pur- 
chaser will  imply  that  the  latter  did  not  examine  the 
change  with  sufficient  care,  certainly  not  with  as  much  care 
as  the  change  was  arranged  by  the  salesman.  In  that  re- 
spect the  salesman  was  truly  the  more  careful  and,  in  the 
detail  of  care,  superior,  and  he  gets  much  the  same  grati- 
fication out  of  the  situation  as  he  would  out  of  any  mild 
practical  joke.  All  practical  jokes  hinge  upon  the  sudden 
emergence  of  a  situation  in  which  the  perpetrator  is  mo* 


270    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

mentarily  the  superior,  and  "  gets  the  laugh  on "  the 
other.  But  in  the  concealed  coin  "  short  change  "  trick 
above  mentioned  the  resistance  is  very  much  covered  but 
consists  in  the  fact  that  it  is  a  source  of  satisfaction  to  the 
salesman,  who  frequently  in  this  episode  is  some  small 
proprietor,  even  to  appear  for  a  short  time,  to  give  out 
less  money  than  he  should.  Naturally  he  wishes  to  give 
back  no  change  at  all,  but  failing  of  this  satisfaction,  he 
unconsciously  takes  the  next  thing  to  it  and  gives  for  a 
moment  the  impression,  both  to  himself  and  to  the  cus- 
tomer, that  he  is  holding  on  to  his  money.  The  practical 
joke  element  of  this  incident  is,  of  course,  perfectly  con- 
scious. The  salesman  thinks  that  is  all  he  wants,  but 
fails  to  see  the  unconscious  satisfaction  taken  by  him  out 
of  the  fact  of  the  apparently  retained  money. 

Transference  as  Identification 

One  of  the  ways  in  which  identification  works  out  is  in 
the  unconscious  identification  of  a  present  personal  re- 
lation with  a  past  one.  The  individual  behaves  toward 
some  person  in  his  environment  as  he  did  toward  his 
father  or  mother  or  their  surrogate  in  his  early  youth. 
Roughly  speaking  this  is  expressed  by  saying  that  the 
school  stands  in  loco  parentis  to  the  child.  But  the  un- 
conscious reaction  to  the  parent  in  this  relation  has  never 
been  considered.  That  the  school  has  taken  up  some  of 
the  functions  of  the  parent  is  supplemented  on  the  child's 
part  by  his  unconsciously  behaving  toward  the  school,  and 
more  specifically  toward  the  teacher,  as  he  unconsciously 
behaved  toward  the  parent.  Thus  an  unfortunate  home 
life,  beginning  even  in  the  first  year,  will  produce  in  the 


TRANSFERENCE  MEANS  OF  INFLUENCE  271 

child  either  a  rebellious,  or  a  cowed,  or  a  clingingly  de- 
pendent attitude,  for  instance,  which  will  be  unconsciously 
and  inevitably  transferred  to  the  teacher  as  the  first  per- 
son with  whom  he  comes  in  close  contact  after  father 
or  mother.  The  transference  is  one  of  unconscious  be- 
haviour, and  explains  many  of  the  child's  reactions  to 
teacher  and,  even  at  a  later  date,  to  some  of  his  school- 
mates. If  the  parent  has  been  one  of  those  who  do 
everything  for  the  child,  thus  interfering  with  his  inde- 
pendence of  action,  it  is  quite  likely  that  the  same  actions 
will  be  looked  for  from  the  teacher,  who  will  find  it  most 
difficult  to  get  any  independent  work  done.  If  again  the 
parent  situation  at  home  has  contained  an  aggressive 
domineering  father,  it  is  quite  possible  either  that  the 
child,  if  a  boy,  will  reproduce,  through  identification  of 
himself  with  the  father,  the  aggressive  attitude  toward 
the  woman  teacher,  or  the  subdued  and  sullen  attitude 
toward  a  strong  man  teacher.  In  any  case  the  behaviour 
of  the  child  in  school  is  a  replica  of  that  in  the  early 
home,  or  of  the  early  influences. 

Transference  as  a  Means  of  influence 

This  transference,  however,  which,  it  must  be  re- 
membered, is  absolutely  unknown  to  the  child,  is  the 
means  by  which  the  well-informed  teacher  can  exercise 
the  greatest  good  influence  over  the  pupil.  It  will  not 
be  placed  consciously  before  the  pupil  until  the  adoles- 
cent period  is  well  under  way,  but,  although  it  is  some- 
thing of  which  the  younger  pupil  should  never  become 
aware,  it  should  be  consciously  and  systematically  planned 
by  the  teacher,  for  it  is  his  strongest  card,  not  only  to  get 


272    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

efficienq^  in  the  petty  details  of  school  work,  but  also  to 
exercise  that  much  more  benign  influence  which  will  give 
the  pupil  sureness  and  confidence  in  his  behaviour  toward 
reality  in  the  years  to  come. 

For  the  parent  situation  which  tends  to  fix  at  an  in- 
credibly early  age  a  pattern  of  behaviour  in  the  child,  the 
teacher  is  not,  of  course,  in  the  least  responsible.  The 
parent  situation,  on  the  other  hand,  rather  increases  his 
opportunities  for  doing  good,  for,  by  means  of  the  newer 
psychology,  the  teacher  may  acquire  the  power  of  con- 
sciously reducing  this  spiritual  fracture  and  at  the  end  of 
the  course  returning  the  child  to  the  world  much  better 
equipped  to  meet  its  contingencies,  though  the  pupil  may 
never  know  it,  than  the  school  authorities  or  the  state 
could  ever  expect. 

A  Wrangling  Boy 

As  an  illustration  I  might  take  a  boy  who  lost  his 
father  at  an  early  age  and  evidenced  in  the  classroom  a 
tendency  to  fly  off  the  track  at  every  opportunity.  This 
was  due  not  alone  to  the  natural  resistance  to  authority 
and  to  the  accomplishment  of  work,  for  he  had  great 
ability,  but  was  due  to  the  habit  he  had  unconsciously  and 
blamelessly  formed,  of  arguing  with  his  mother.  The 
teacher  was  at  first  dragged  off  the  track  and  wrangled 
verbally  with  the  boy,  and  then  suddenly  realized  that 
he  was  himself  reacting  as  the  mother  would  have  reacted 
in  the  same  situation,  and  that  here  was  a  boy  who  had 
never  had  the  opportunity  of  seeing  how  a  rational  man 
would  behave  toward  a  difl'iculty.  The  teacher  then  got 
control  of  the  situation  simply  by  refusing  to  follow  the 


TRANSFERENCE  THE  CRUX  273 

belligerent  suggestions  contained  in  the  boy's  unconscious 
attitude,  and  by  showing  him  that  there  was  no  question 
of  authority  but  merely  one  of  the  use  of  the  boy's  own 
very  excellent  abilities  from  which  he  could  get  a  much 
greater  satisfaction  than  from  the  discussion  of  essen- 
tially irrelevant  topics  with  the  teacher. 

The  Teacher's  Transference 

This  illustration  shows  both  the  teacher's  instinctive 
suggestibility  to  the  attitudes  of  the  children,  which  was 
fortunately  overcome  by  the  teacher's  reflection  about 
his  own  actions  with  the  boy,  and  the  fact  that,  without 
the  deeper  insight  which  the  newer  psychology  gives  into 
the  unconscious  behaviour  of  the  pupil,  the  teacher  might 
have  been  led  far  astray  from  the  goal  of  education.  It 
also  shows  that  there  is,  in  some  teachers,  at  least,  a  trans- 
ference of  behaviour-pattern  from  the  teacher's  own  home 
influence  to  the  pupils  in  the  classroom.  Some  teachers, 
in  other  words,  are  behaving  toward  their  classes  or  to 
individual  pupils  in  the  modes  to  which  they,  the 
teachers,  were  initiated  in  their  own  infancy.  Surely  such 
teachers,  at  least,  need  the  conscious  attitude  which  the 
newer  psychology  can  give,  in  place  of  that  which  they  are 
unwittingly  manifesting  in  their  own  reactions  to  the 
school  environment. 


Transference  the  Crux 

The  topic  of  transference  is  one  of  the  most,  if  not 
the  most,  vitally  important  in  the  whole  of  the  newer 
psychology.     It  is  possible  to  give  here  only  the  merest 


274    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

sketch  of  Its  many  applications  not  only  in  school  but 
everywhere  in  human  life.  By  a  slight  understanding  of 
it  teachers  are  immeasurably  better  able  to  interpret  the 
otherwise  frequently  incomprehensible  acts  of  children 
and  adults,  and  themselves  to  react  in  a  manner  infinitely 
more  serviceable  to  society  than  by  blindly  allowing  their 
own  transferences  toward  the  children  to  control  their 
teaching.  But  when  it  is  realized  how  absolutely  uncon- 
scious is  this  modelling  of  present  behaviour  on  forms 
which  were  well  fixed  in  infancy,  it  will  be  seen  how  im- 
possible it  is  really  to  influence  another  soul  unwittingly 
for  its  own  good,  without  taking  into  consideration  the 
unconscious  elements  of  the  general  situation. 

Any  situation  of  human  relationship  contains,  as  I  hope 
will  be  clearly  seen  by  this  time,  elements  of  unconscious 
behaviour  which  practically  control  it  and  make  it  quite 
evident  that  all  pupils  and  most  teachers  do  not  know 
what  they  are  doing  most  of  the  time.  Only  by  taking 
account  of  the  unconscious  element  can  they  know  all 
they  are  actually  doing.  Frink  *  has  given  a  very  clear 
explanation  and  Holt  f  one  possibly  still  more  apposite 
to  the  present  topic,  of  the  individual's  unconsciousness 
of  what  he  is  really  doing.  Frink  cites  the  instance  of 
the  retriever  dog  and  how  he  is  trained  not  to  injure 
with  his  mouth  the  birds  he  retrieves,  by  means  of  giving 
him  a  bird  stuck  full  of  outward  projecting  pins.  The 
dog  mouths  these  very  gently,  and  ever  after  retrieves 
as  if  he  were  carrying  birds  containing  pins.  The  prob- 
lem of  analyzing  out  the  transference  element  In  be- 
haviour of  humans  is  to  find,  and  in  the  case  of  adults 

j        -  *  Morbid  Fears  and  Compulsions,  page  508. 

t  The  Freudian  Wish,  page  87. 


NEGATIVE  TRANSFERENCE  275 

get  them  to  find  out  themselves,  what  are  the  "  phantoms 
of  past  pins  "  to  which  they  are  reacting  unawares. 

"Phantoms  of  Past  Pins  " 

If  the  teacher  finds  this  out  in  the  case  of  the  pupil, 
he  can  act  accordingly,  without  the  pupil's  knowing  the 
significance  of  this  action,  and  use  the  "  pin  phantoms  " 
to  improve  his  own  work  with  the  pupils.  The  realiza- 
tion of  what  are  the  "  past  pins,"  whose  phantoms  are 
such  potent  realities  in  his  life,  produces  in  the  adult  who 
is  so  fortunate  as  to  discover  them  a  truly  rational  reac- 
tion to  the  world  of  external  reality  which  will  remove 
most  of  his  difficulties  and  enable  him  to  use  his  entire 
force  upon  the  world,  unhampered  by  internal  uncon- 
scious conflict.  The  dog  was  supposedly  unaware  that 
he  was  acting  as  if  all  the  later  birds  were  stuffed  full  of 
pins.  We  are  all  acting  as  if  all  the  time,  and  the  prob- 
lem is  to  find  out  "  as  if  "  what.  The  solution  of  this 
problem  is,  I  believe,  possible  for  teachers.  It  is  im- 
possible for  pupils,  but  unnecessary,  if  the  teachers  are 
themselves  analytical  enough  to  unravel  their  own  past 
lives  and  unsnarl  the  children's  for  them,  giving  them 
only  the  net  results  in  the  shape  of  a  new  reaction  pat- 
tern, which  will  help  and  not  impede  their  progress. 

Negative  Transference 

The  concept  of  a  negative  transference  Is  found  to  ac- 
count for  a  marked  hostility  of  the  pupil  to  the  teacher. 
In  large  schools  with  many  classes  of  the  same  grade  it 
is  customary  for  a  pupil  who  "  can't  get  on  "  with  one 


276    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

teacher,  to  be  handed  over  to  another.  The  process  Is 
sometimes  repeated  several  times,  with  the  final  effect  of 
branding  the  pupil  as  incorrigible,  if  he  does  not  succeed 
in  finding  an  agreeable  teacher.  This  of  course  is  a  tech- 
nical error  and  a  loss  of  opportunity  on  the  part  of 
the  first  teacher  who  found  the  pupil  impossible — a  make- 
shift which  allows  a  very  interesting  problem  to  go 
utterly  unsolved.  For  the  negative  transference  can,  by 
the  proper  means,  be  readily  changed  into  a  positive  trans- 
ference in  which  the  pupil's  whole  attitude  toward  life 
is  likely  to  change  for  the  better. 

Transference  and  Resistance 

As  the  concept  of  negative  transference  might  by  some 
persons  be  taken  as  one  of  the  manifestations  of  resist- 
ance, it  is  necessary  here  to  show  the  true  relations  be- 
tween them.  A  negative  transference,  being  an  uncon- 
scious hostility  to  the  person  to  whom  the  ttansference 
of  the  infantile  pattern  of  behaviour  takes  place,  remains 
nevertheless  a  transference.  The  expression  of  the  emo- 
tional phase  of  it,  however,  is,  by  virtue  of  the  ambi- 
valent quality  of  emotion  as  such,  invested  in  a  negative 
form.  This  will  seem  contradictory  to  some  persons,  so 
I  might  illustrate  from  other  sources.  An  artist  is  some- 
times quite  as  pleased  with  a  great  deal  of  adverse  criti- 
cism of  his  performance  as  with  a  small  amount  of  favour- 
able comment.  Whether  the  comments  are  favourable  or 
otherwise  does  not  make  so  much  difference  as  the  fact 
that  the  performance  causes  a  great  deal  of  comment, 
which  means  that  a  great  many  people  are  much  inter- 
ested in  it,  or  that  their  attention  is  compelled.    Similarly 


TRANSFERENCE  AND  RESISTANCE     277 

of  the  child  who  is  forced  by  an  unconscious  attraction  to 
devote  a  great  deal  of  attention  to  a  teacher.  The  form 
that  this  attention  takes  is  not  as  important  as  the  fact 
of  it.  It  may  be  wheedling,  teasing,  fawning,  distant  ad- 
miration or  downright  animosity.  If  the  form  it  takes 
is  displeasing  to  the  teacher,  it  can  be  changed  if  the 
teacher  knows  how  to  do  it.  But  in  all  these  instances 
I  am  illustrating  a  transference  to  the  teacher  of  an  af- 
fection which  once  belonged  to  the  parent  exclusively. 
Resistance  is  the  only  barrier  to  the  outgoing  of  the 
soul  to  other  persons  and  things  and  is  based  on  inhibi- 
tions and  fears.  It  is,  like  the  other  mechanisms,  mostly 
unconscious,  although  it  enters  consciousness  occasionally 
in  the  form  of  positive  dislikes,  the  most  patent  form  of 
resistance.  Its  latent  forms  may  be  inferred  from  many 
actions  the  characteristic  trait  of  which  Is  some  defect. 
For  instance,  the  absolutely  innocent  forgetting  to  do  a 
school  task,  to  comply  with  a  request,  even  to  think  of 
doing  a  favour.  In  a  certain  sense  no  defective  perform- 
ance is  absolutely  innocent,  on  account  of  the  resistance 
to  doing  a  perfect  performance,  and  we  can  hardly  excuse 
the  resistance.  The  very  fact  of  its  not  occurring  to  the 
bridegroom,  for  instance,  to  take  the  wedding  ring  from 
the  chiffonier  and  put  it  in  his  pocket,  when  he  started 
for  the  church  to  marry  the  girl  of  his  choice  is  an  al- 
most unmistakable  indication  of  an  unconscious  resistance 
to  marrying  her.  Not  a  single  thing  that  we  leave  un- 
done, except  through  sheer  lack  of  time  in  an  absolutely 
crowded  life,  is  other  than  an  indication  of  a  resistance 
on  our  part  against  doing  the  very  things  we  forget  to 
do,  or  find  insuperable  difficulty  or  any  distaste  or  dis- 
inclination whatever  in  doing. 


278    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

This,  then,  shows  the  difference  between  transference 
and  resistance.  In  some  instances  the  pupil  has  no  resist- 
ance against  the  teacher.  He  is  only  too  anxious 
to  plague.  He  has  a  transference  for  her,  but  it  is 
a  negative  one.  If  he  had  the  same  degree  of  resistance 
against  her  that  is  indicated  by  the  transference,  he  would 
forget  her  and  her  commands  and  requests,  and  his  mind 
would  be  entirely  engrossed  in  something  else.  She 
would  be  ignored.  So  any  teacher  can  look  around  the 
classroom  and  make  her  inferences  as  to  which  pupils 
have  positive  or  negative  transferences  for  her  and  what 
others  have  merely  a  resistance  against  her.  The  latter 
will  be  the  hardest  to  influence  for  their  own  good.  In 
fact,  some  children  are  so  brought  up  that  they  have  a 
resistance  against  almost  anything,  particularly  in  school. 
The  extreme  degree  of  resistance  renders  the  child  in- 
educable. 

Of  course  it  may  work  out  that  a  child  has  a  resist- 
ance against  doing  a  specific  thing  which  happens  to  be 
the  contrary  of  an  act  which  would  show  a  positive  trans- 
ference. For  instance,  a  child  does  what  he  is  told  by  his 
teacher,  but  gets  it  all  wrong  or,  out  of  spite,  does  ex- 
actly the  opposite  of  what  he  is  told  to  do.  Such  an 
act  should  not  be  called  a  resistance.  This  negativism  is 
the  same  as  that  seen  in  some  insane  patients  who,  when 
told  to  hold  out  the  hand,  will  put  it  behind  the  back. 
They  act  immediately  upon  a  suggestion,  but  negatively 
Instead  of  affirmatively.  Nevertheless  they  respond. 
In  the  schoolroom  the  lack  of  response  shows  the  resist- 
ance, and  it  is  the  teacher's  greatest  problem  how  to  re- 
move it. 


EDUCATIONAL  ANALYSIS  279 

Medical  and  Educational  Analysis 

In  the  medical  analysis  used  in  the  cure  of  nervous 
diseases  the  general  resistance  of  the  patient  is  effectually 
removed  only  by  getting  him  to  talk.  Some  practitioners 
believe  indeed  that  the  successful  removal  of  the  resist- 
ance perfects  the  cure,  and  that  no  cure  is  complete  with- 
out the  reduction  of  resistance  to  the  minimum.  In  short, 
there  is  no  topic  which  the  patient  should  feel  unwilling 
to  discuss  with  the  physician.  A  statement  quite  parallel 
to  this  could  be  made  about  the  resistance  of  the  child 
to  the  school  environment.  It  will  be  found,  in  the  school 
life  of  the  child  who  shows  a  greater  resistance  than  the 
average,  that  there  is  some  thought  which  has  occupied 
his  mind  to  the  exclusion  of  other  thoughts  and  prevented 
the  most  helpful  thoughts  from  being  operative.  In 
medical  analysis  the  thoughts  most  obstructive  are  those 
which  concern  some  thing  which  the  patient  has  done 
and  about  which  his  conscience  troubles  him.  It  is  safe 
to  say  the  same  thing  about  the  resistant  child  in  school, 
and  also  to  say  that  the  secret  sin  of  the  child  can  much 
more  readily  be  confessed  and  much  more  easily  con- 
doned than  that  of  the  adult.  But  as  it  is  the  object  of 
medical  analysis  to  free  the  spirit  manacled  as  it  is  with 
the  inhibitions  imposed  upon  it  by  a  guilty  conscience, 
so  it  is  the  object  of  educational  analysis  to  release  a 
spirit  struggling  against  some  obstruction  which  nine 
times  out  of  ten  is  purely  subjective  or  fancied.  The 
resistance  of  the  child  against  the  details  of  the  educa- 
tional plan  is  based  on  his  inhibitions,  his  fears.  He 
fears  that  he  may  fail,  that  he  may  not  get  satisfaction 
and  what  not,  and  his  fear,  and  thus  his  inhibition,  should 


28o    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

be  removed  so  that  he  may  get  on  a  path  where  he  may 
go  ahead  full  speed  without  thought  of  error  or  harm. 

The  prospect  of  the  teacher  being  able  to  free  an  im- 
prisoned soul  is  a  very  inspiring  one — almost  as  inspir- 
ing as  the  prospect  of  saving  a  lost  one.  But  until  today 
the  way  of  doing  this  liberating  work  has  not  been  thor- 
oughly understood.  In  this  of  all  times  when  most  of 
the  nations  of  the  world  are  at  war  in  the  interests  of 
political  liberty,  it  is  a  proud  thought  for  the  teacher  that 
he,  too,  although  not  privileged  to  taste  of  the  consum- 
mate excitement  of  a  life  in  the  trenches,  is  nevertheless 
privileged  to  wage  a  war  for  freedom  in  every  school- 
room in  the  land — the  freedom  of  the  human  spirit  from 
irrationality  which  is  worse  than  ignorance.  And  just  as 
the  present  war  has  developed  new  engines  of  destruction 
and  a  miHtary  organization  embracing  the  entire  world, 
so  the  most  modern  warfare  of  the  spirit  requires  the 
help  of  the  latest  psychological  discoveries,  among  which 
the  one  that  stands  out  pre-eminent  is  that  of  the  uncon- 
scious mental  activity. 

Summary 

[  The  attitude  of  the  child  toward  work  shows  a  per- 
|fectly  natural  resistance  which  is  partly  due  to  the  au- 
thoritative manner  of  teachers.  This  produces  on  the 
part  of  the  child  an  inability  to  express  himself  which  in 
turn  has  developed  a  habit  in  the  teacher  of  asking  end- 
less questions,  whose  insincerity  prevents  their  being  truly 
answered.  The  nature  of  a  true  question  and  a  true  an- 
swer is  outlined.  Teachers'  questions  are  continued  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  when  the  child  fails  to  understand, 


SUMMARY  281 

his  mind  does  not  stop  working,  but  proceeds  to  make  and 
satisfy  wishes  in  unremitting  rhythm,  of  which  the  teacher 
is  quite  unaware,  just  as  humanity  in  general  is  un- 
aware of  the  unconscious  wish-life  of  all  individuals.  Ex- 
amples are  given  of  the  constant  satisfaction  of  uncon- 
scious wishes  by  means  of  apparently  senseless  acts  in 
school,  both  by  mutilation  of  school  property  and  by 
asking  idle  questions. 

Other  examples  of  resistance  in  the  schoolroom  are 
given,  and  one  of  resistance  in  the  market.  The  trans- 
ference of  an  attitude  of  the  child  from  that  maintained 
toward  the  parent  to  that  maintained  toward  the  teacher 
is  described  and  examples  are  given,  both  of  this  trans- 
ference and  that  of  the  teacher  toward  the  pupil.  Nega- 
tive transference  is  distinguished  from  resistance.  The 
relation  between  medical  and  academic  analysis  is  noted. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

EMOTION 

An  emotion  is  the  conscious  or  unconscious  physical 
reaction  to  a  stimulus  which  may  be  itself  either  conscious 
or  unconscious.  In  one  sense,  then,  we  are  having  emo- 
tions all  the  time.  But  the  further  delimitation  of  emo- 
tions in  order  to  separate  them  from  sensations  of  the 
familiar  "  five "  senses  and  the  unfamiliar  senses  of 
weight,  pressure,  temperature,  motion,  etc.,  must  include 
the  specification  that  they  are  the  mental  reaction  to  a 
stimulus  which  is  in  the  individual  organism.  The  mental 
element,  which  is  necessary  to  separate  emotions  from 
the  purely  physiological  conditions  which  are  continuous 
during  the  life  of  the  body,  has  to  be  further  qualified 
by  saying  that  the  emotions  are  not  only  a  mental  re- 
action to  a  stimulus  which  is  in  the  body,  but  that  the 
usually  accepted  emotions  are  those  sensations  which  are 
most  closely  associated  with  the  ego.  In  other  words 
there  are  many  sensations  which  come  into  consciousness, 
from  the  body,  just  as  there  are  many  sensations  which 
are  of  too  small  a  degree  of  intensity  to  enter  conscious- 
ness, and  these  would  be  included  in  a  definition  which 
embraced  all  sensations  of  stimuli  which  were  of  internal 
origin. 

I  think  that  much  would  be  gained  by  including  all  such 
stimuli,  but  then  it  would  be  hard  to  say  anything  about 
them  or  make  any  good  inductions  regarding  them  on  ac- 

282 


REPRESSED  EMOTIONS  283 

count  of  Indefiniteness.  So,  principally  for  the  purpose 
of  talking  about  what  other  people  have  meant  when 
they  speak  of  emotions,  we  have  to  cut  out  of  the  strict 
definition  all  those  reactions  to  stimuli  which  are  both  of 
an  unconscious  origin  and  themselves  of  an  unconscious 
nature,  although  we  know  that  there  must  be  such  re- 
actions to  such  stimuli  taking  place  in  the  individual  all 
the  time. 

Repressed  Emotions 

Furthermore  we  have  learned  in  recent  years  that  there 
are  repressed  or  buried  emotions  that  have  an  important 
effect  upon  the  health  of  the  individual,  and  that  only 
academically  can  they  not  themselves  be  called  emotions. 
There  is  no  accepted  name  for  them,  and  psychoanalysts 
have  been  forced  to  adopt  a  mode  of  description  of  them 
which  declares  that  while  there  cannot  be  such  a  thing 
as  an  unconscious  emotion,  that  is,  an  emotion  consist- 
ing of  the  unconscious  reaction  to  a  stimulus  which  is 
either  conscious  or  unconscious,  and  that  therefore  every 
emotion  is  by  definition  conscious,  the  actual  original  emo- 
tion of  which  the  present  emotion  is  but  the  substitute 
has  not  ceased  to  exist. 

Thus,  if  a  person  has  loved  another  and  that  emotion 
has  turned  to  hate,  the  emotion  called  by  the  restrictive 
name  love  has  ceased  to  exist,  but  this  is  quite  analogous 
to  saying  that  if  a  person  has  started  to  walk  north  and 
then  changes  his  direction  and  goes  south,  then  the  direc- 
tion of  north  has  ceased  to  exist  although  the  action  of 
walking  still  continues.  T-he  emotion  of  hate  may  be  the 
reverse  direction  of  love,  and  yet  the  emotion  may,  as 
a  unit  which  represents  the  original  unit,  persist. 


284    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Constant  Quantity  of  Emotion 

We  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  unconscious 
craving  for  love,  life  and  activity  is  constant  in  quantity, 
and  that  whenever  it  seems  to  disappear  from  the  human 
consciousness  it  has  not  really  gone  out  of  existence  but 
has,  like  a  train  entering  a  tunnel,  merely  disappeared 
from  consciousness  for  a  time.  We  therefore  regard 
emotion  as  we  regard  the  perennial  vital  urge,  namely  as 
continuous;  and  varying  only  in  the  degree  in  which  it 
appears  in  consciousness.  Just  as  we  have  desire  all  the 
time,  we  have  emotion  all  the  time,  only  some  of  it  mo- 
mentarily disappears  from  our  consciousness  to  appear 
again  at  some  later  date. 

What  seems  to  make  it  necessary,  in  order  to  be  con- 
sistent, that  we  should  speak  only  of  conscious  emotion 
is  the  undoubted  fact  that  we  are  never  angry,  for  in- 
stance, at  nothing.*  When  we  are  angry  we  are  always 
angry  at  something,  and  that  something  changes  from 
one  thing  to  another.  This  condition  we  describe  by  say- 
ing that  the  ideational  content  of  the  emotion  changes. 
This  is  not  merely  saying  that  when  we  are  in  good  con- 
dition, physically,  we  think  of  now  one  thing  and  now 
another  to  be  happy  at.  It  means,  on  the  contrary,  that 
a  flood  of  emotion,  once  released  upon  one  idea  or  group 
of  ideas,  may  meet  with  social  opposition  and  become 
dissociated  from  those  particular  ideas.  That  does  not 
mean,  however,  that  the  flood  of  emotion  has  been 
dammed  entirely  without  outkt,  for  such  a  circumstance 
is  as  unthinkable  as  that  any  of  the  laws  of  physics  should 

♦ "  In  sooth  I  know  not  why  I  am  so  sad "  may  be  spoken  sincerely, 
but  such  a  remark  always  denies  the  sadness  or  conceals  its  real  cause. 


CONSTANT  QUANTITY  OF  EMOTION      285 

all  of  a  sudden  be  abrogated.  But  it  means  that  the  emo- 
tion once  associated  with  one  idea  becomes  associated 
with  another.  A  similar  displacement  is  seen  in  the 
sadism  which  (see  page  89)  has  been  repressed  in  its 
natural  original  direction  of  pleasure  at  inflicting  cruelty 
to  the  direction  of  taking  pleasure  in  having  cruelty  in- 
flicted on  self,  or  the  other  direction  of  preventing  cruelty 
from  being  inflicted  by  other  persons  upon  still  others, 
where  we  have  the  anti-vivisectionists,  and  those  devoting 
a  great  deal  of  energy  to  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to 
children  and  to  animals. 

From  these  considerations  we  infer  that  emotion  is  a 
natural  state  of  the  organism,  and  that  like  respiration 
and  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  it  is  variable  only  in  its 
incidence,  by  which  I  mean  that  just  as  the  actual  quantity 
of  the  blood  is  the  same,  amounts  of  it  supplied  to  the 
brain,  the  muscles  of  the  arms  and  legs,  the  stomach  and 
the  intestines  are  different  at  different  times  according 
to  the  exigencies  of  the  organism,  so  the  emotions  are,  or 
I  would  better  say,  emotion  is,  a  constant  quantity,  but 
that  it  is,  as  it  were,  supplied  to  different  ideas  in  dif- 
ferent amounts  at  different  times. 

To  carry  the  analogy  a  step  further,  if  too  much  blood 
is  taken  by  the  muscles  at  a  time  when  there  is  food  in 
the  stomach,  digestion  is  delayed  or  made  imperfect  in 
some  way.  In  this  we  come  very  near  home,  because  it 
is  well  known  that  emotions,  which  exercise  a  deep  in- 
fluence upon  the  blood  supply,  will  have  the  same  effect 
upon  digestion.  Some  may  say  that  I  am  arguing  that 
circulation  is  emotion.  In  a  sense  it  is  so,  for  both  are 
but  forms  of  motion  of  the  particles  making  up  the  body. 
Circulation  is  sometimes  "  read  off  "  into  consciousness 


286    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

and  sometimes  emotion  is.  Possibly  it  would  be  true  to 
say  that  all  physiological  motion  is  read  by  consciousness 
now  as  circulation,  now  as  sensation  of  the  "  five  senses," 
and  now  as  emotion.  Here  too  the  question  of  amount 
enters,  for  it  is  quite  clear  that  a  strong  emotion  so  fills 
consciousness  that  there  is  room  for  little  else  and  we 
do  things  of  which  we  are  not  in  the  slightest  degree 
aware. 

So  it  adds  to  consistency  of  thought  and  logicalness  of 
reasoning  to  regard  all  states  of  mind  as  conscious  only 
in  the  degree  in  which  they  can,  so  to  speak,  be  "  read." 
That  they  are  not  read  by  the  individual  at  any  given 
time  is  no  reason  why  we  should  have  to  regard  them  as 
non-existent.  It  might  be  clarifying  to  speak  of  a  unitary 
"  vitality  "  which  comes  into  consciousness  now  as  love, 
now  as  hate,  now  as  the  perception  that  the  heart  is  beat- 
ing violently,  now  as  the  perception  that  respiration  Is 
heavy,  now  as  a  pain  in  the  Intestines,  now  as  a  feeling 
of  happiness  and  so  on.  This  would  be  quite  congruent 
with  the  principle  which  is  taken  as  the  fundamental 
hypothesis  of  psychoanalysis,  namely,  that  the  desire 
for  life,  love  and  activity  Is  constant  but  subject  to 
periodical  obscuration,  nevertheless  continuing  as  long 
as  the  Individual  Is  alive. 

But  to  return  to  the  consideration  of  the  emotions  as 
such.  The  modern  way  of  looking  at  them  from  the 
analytical  point  of  view  shows  us  things  about  them  which 
at  first  sight  seem  quite  contradictory.  We  hesitate  to 
accept  the  psychoanalyst's  dictum  that  militant  suffragism 
Is  but  the  unconscious  desire  of  the  suffragette  to  be  con- 
trolled by,  and  not  to  control,  not  men  but  a  man,  that  the 
lynchings  and  the  chivalry  of  the  Southern  States  are  not 


CONSTANT  QUANTITY  OF  EMOTION      287 

a  desire  so  much  to  prevent  outrage  but  to  enjoy  outrage. 
We  might  go  to  the  extreme  of  saying  that  war  is  but 
an  indulgence,  in  the  part  of  every  participator,  of  his 
propensity  to  inflict  cruelty,  but  it  would  be  unwise  at 
the  present  time.  Accustomed  as  we  are  to  think  in 
traditional  modes  of  thought,  we  tend  to  object  when  we 
hear  that  self-sacrifice  is  only  a  disguised  form  of  the 
desire  to  inflict  cruelty  upon  others,  transformed  as  it 
is  into  a  desire  to  inflict  cruelty  on  self,  that  love  for 
women  is  a  form  of  selfishness  which  differs  only  in  de- 
gree from  the  love  of  anything  else,  and  that  emotions 
are  but  a  kind  of  sensation  differing  in  quality  as  does 
blue  from  the  tone  of  a  bell  or  from  an  actual  pain  of  a 
cut  finger. 

If  emotion  is  a  form  of  human  activity  which  is  called 
emotions  only  when  it  is.  reported  to  consciousness  through 
certain  nerves  that  do  not  bring  reports  from  outside  of 
the  body,  and  if  the  laws  of  this  activity  can  be  learned, 
then  we  shall  certainly  be  in  a  position  to  act  much  more 
intelligently  toward  it  in  the  classroom,  in  the  home  and 
in  the  world  of  business.  William  James  put  his  theory 
of  the  emotions  epigrammatically  in  saying  that  we  do 
not  cry  because  we  are  sorry,  but  we  are  sorry  because 
we  cry,  but  it  certainly  seems  more  sensible  to  say  that 
we  are  sorry  and  we  cry  both  for  the  same  underlying 
reason,  namely,  that  an  unconscious  mental  activity  is 
"  read  off  "  simultaneously  by  consciousness  in  two  ways, 
as  an  emotion  and  as  a  flow  of  tears,  just  as  an  orange 
is  read  off  as  a  colour  and  a  fragrance,  a  touch,  or  a  taste. 

When  the  temperature  of  a  metal  is  raised  to  a  certain 
degree  it  gives  off  heat  which  is  perceived  by  the  sense 
of  heat  which  is  in  the  skin  and  mucous  membrane.    When 


288    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

it  is  raised  to  a  sufHciently  greater  degree,  it  gives  off 
light  which  is  perceived  by  the  eye.  In  a  manner  quite 
parallel  to  this  we  can  say  that  when  desire  is  raised  to 
a  certain  degree  it  gives  off  emotion,  and  when  raised 
to  a  sufficiently  greater  degree  it  gives  off  action.*  Just 
as  the  metal  when  emitting  light  emits  heat  at  the  same 
time,  so  the  soul  when  sufficiently  stimulated  gives  off 
both  action  and  emotion  at  the  same  time.  It  is  not  so 
very  different  if  we  say  that  just  as  heat  is  a  mode  of  mo- 
tion, so  action  and  emotion  are  modes  of  motion,  and 
the  heat  is  a  quality  of  both  the  material  metal  and  the 
material  animal  body.  On  this  analogy  emotion  becomes 
heat  and  action  light,  which  puts  the  two  in  the  accepted 
relation  of  value.  Emotion  in  a  person  is  metaphorically 
spoken  of  as  heat,  and  as  light  is  more  valuable  to  society 
than  heat,  so  is  action  more  valuable  than  mere  feeling. 
The  social  value  of  the  action  comes  from  its  outward 
direction,  and  the  comparatively  smaller  value  of  emo- 
tion comes  from  the  fact  of  its  inward  direction.  An 
emotion  is  a  perception  of  something  which  is  caused  by 
an  internal  stimulus,  and  absorption  of  the  mind  in  the 
emotions  is  an  inward  turning  of  the  attention  which  if 
carried  too  far  causes  that  form  of  introversion  which 
leads  to  various  kinds  of  mental  morbidness. 


Error  of  Extreme  Idealism 

An  earlier  philosophy  chose  to  regard  all  experiences 
as  they  come  through  the  avenues  of  sense  as  indistin- 

*  There  we  see  temperamental  differences  in  people  because  people 
melt  or  glow  or  boil  or  vaporize  at  different  temperatures,  the  very  re- 
served   (=:repressed)    requiring  the  higher  temperature. 


ERROR  OF  EXTREME  IDEALISM        289 

guishable  In  the  point  from  which  they  come.  An 
extreme  idealism  would  therefore  look  at  every  incoming 
sensation  as  merely  incoming,  and  no  matter  how  far  it 
came,  allowing  no  degrees  of  distance,  making  no  distinc- 
tion between  impressions  coming  from  the  body  itself 
and  from  the  external  world  outside  of  the  body.  It 
was  as  if  a  person  should  sit  and  view  the  world  through 
two  panes  of  equally  transparent  glass.  If  there  were 
nothing  between  those  two  panes  of  glass,  such  a  manner 
of  looking  at  the  world  would  have  no  defect.  But  if 
there  were  a  mass  of  animal  tissue  between  the  inner  and 
the  outer  pane,  which  changed  every  ray  of  light  coming 
from  the  world  outside  of  the  outer  pane,  it  would  make 
a  great  difference  in  one's  reactions  to  the  body  between 
the  panes  and  to  the  world  of  reality  outside  of  the  outer 
pane.  To  say  that  there  was  no  difference  in  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  world  viewed  through  the  two  panes  is 
not  the  same  thing  as  saying  that  no  person  can  see  the 
world  without  looking  through  them  and  what  is  be- 
tween them.  Of  course  he  has  to  look  through  both  and 
he  has  to  infer  that  everybody  else  has  to  do  the  same 
thing.  But  a  very  practical  result  follows  from  the  ne- 
cessity of  seeing  through.  If  we  delude  ourselves  into 
thinking  that  we  can  never  see  what  is  really  there,  out- 
side of  the  two  panes,  we  might  just  as  well  say  that 
we  cannot  touch  except  by  means  of  a  jointed  stick, 
which  goes  through  the  panes,  the  world  which  is  outside 
of  the  outer  one,  and  therefore  there  is  no  use  in  trying 
to  act  at  all.  Such  a  way  of  thinking  virtually  says: 
"  Let  us  be  content  to  stay  in  our  glass  case,  for  we  shall 
never  be  able  to  go  outside  of  it  and  wreak  our  strength 
on  the  real  world  which  is  out  there." 


290    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

The  emotions  are  the  things  which  nature  has  placed 
between  the  two  panes  of  glass  through  which  we  have  to 
see  the  world.  Sometimes  the  emotions  are  cloudy  and 
almost  totally  obscure  the  vision  of  things  as  they  are, 
and  sometimes  they  are  as  clear  as  any  air  and  then  we 
rightly  think  that  we  see  things  as  nearly  as  they  are  as  It 
is  possible.  But  there  has  been  little  of  value  offered  us 
by  philosophy  to  enable  us  to  clear  the  space  of  the 
cloudiness  of  the  emotions  or  to  maintain  the  bright 
golden  hue  which  they  sometimes  impart  to  the  world. 

I  have  purposely  chosen  the  figure  of  the  two  panes  of 
glass  to  show  its  inadequacy.  It  is  the  view  of  an  old 
and  out-of-date  philosophy.  Put  the  entire  human  or- 
ganism between  the  two  panes,  then  take  the  two  panes 
away,  and  what  is  the  relation  of  the  ego  to  the  body 
and  to  the  world  ?  The  ego  is  the  body  in  every  particle 
of  its  tissue  and  the  world  is  external  to  it.  There  is  no 
other  way  of  looking  at  it.  There  is  no  difference  be- 
tween my  self  and  my  body,  no  difference  between  myself 
and  my  body  and  my  mind.  All  are  three  ways  of  look- 
ing at  the  same  thing. 

The  World  as  Part  of  the  Body 

But  the  opposite  extreme  of  looking  at  the  world  as  a 
part  of  the  body  is  the  way  every  infant  begins  his  ex- 
perience of  life.  He  makes  no  distinction  between  the 
world  outside  of  his  body  and  that  inside  of  his  body, 
with  the  gradually  beginning  exception  that  he  thinks 
all  things  which  are  painful  are  outside  of  and  those  that 
are  pleasant  are  inside  of  his  body.  It  is  shown  elsewhere 
in  this  volume  how  that  innate  tendency  results  in  a  habit 


ANGER  A  SELF-CASTIGATION         agi 

of  externalizing  all  unpleasant  things  throughout  life  and 
forms  the  mechanism  of  projection  (page  1 18) .  But  here 
I  wish  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  emotions  are  all 
sensations  which  do  really  emanate  from  within  the  body. 
Anger  and  fear  are  just  as  little  a  kind  of  stimulus  com- 
ing from  outside  the  body  as  are  pain  in  the  stomach  or 
in  a  tooth,  but  both  anger  and  fear  are  instinctively  given 
an  outward  reference. 

The  paleontology  of  the  emotions  as  we  might  call  the 
analytic  study  of  these  mind  activities,  has  shown  that 
before  there  were  any  emotions  there  were  only  motions 
in  the  sense  that  a  person  in  prehistoric  times,  if  de- 
prived of  food  by  some  other  person,  would  not  become 
angry  at  that  person  but  would  kill  him,  or  get  rid  of 
him  in  some  other  way.  Anger  was  first  experienced  by 
that  prehistoric  ancestor  who  was  prevented  from  killing 
the  other  fellow  and  had  to  have  some  outlet  for  his 
activity.  If  he  was  held  fast,  say  by  some  of  his  fellows, 
so  that  he  should  not  kill  the  aggressor,  who  might  have 
been  a  good  warrior  and  consequently  valuable  to  the 
tribe,  he  would  have  to  bottle  up  his  activities  entirely 
or  struggle  with  his  captors  until  his  desire  for  activity 
had  waned.  If  in  the  long  run  he  swallowed  his  wrath, 
his  activity  was  spent  on  his  own  body.  Probably  he 
maimed  himself,  in  lieu  of  the  aggressor,  actually  tore 
his  own  hair  and  scratched  his  own  cheeks,  beat  his  breast 
or  what  not. 

Anger  a  Self-Castigation 

Nowadays  the  emotion  of  anger  is  nothing  but  a  self- 
castigation  which  is  practised  by  persons  who  feel  ag- 


292    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

grieved.  It  is  practised  on  themselves  because  society, 
which  is  so  infinitely  stronger  than  it  was,  in  those  good 
old  days  when  there  were  no  Ten  Commandments,  has 
put  a  ban  on  doing  those  very  retributive  actions  for  which 
the  instinct  so  loudly  calls.  So  the  modern  individual, 
when  attacked  in  one  form  or  another,  represses  his  rage, 
which  is  exactly  equivalent  to  satisfying  it  on  himself. 
Thus  it  is  that  anger  is  literally  an  "  unfought  fight." 
It  is  literally  unfought  in  the  external  world  only;  it  is 
literally  fought  in  the  body  of  the  angered  person.  With 
weapons  lying  in  his  own  body  he  slashes  parts  of  his  own 
body  and  does  not  see  the  extent  of  the  damage.  He 
only  knows  that  he  himself  has  been  damaged,  but  what 
part  of  him  and  how  he  can  have  no  knowledge.  He 
attributes  the  damage,  however,  to  the  person  who,  he 
thinks,  has  injured  him.  He  may  have  actually  been 
wounded,  and,  had  he  been  able  to  wound  his  enemy,  he 
would  not  have  given  himself  the  internal  gashes.  There 
would  have  been  two  maimed  men.  Society  gains,  then, 
by  restricting  the  damages  to  fifty  per  cent,  of  what  they 
might  have  been  and  is  thereby  a  great  gainer  in  one  way. 
But  the  man  is  the  loser,  because  he  has  turned  into  a 
psychical  wound  what  might  have  been  merely  a  physical 
wound,  and  in  modern  times  the  psychical  wound  may  be 
the  worse.  But  society  as  a  whole  has  not  up  to  the  pres- 
ent time  been  able  to  see  that  the  mental  is  worse  than 
the  physical  wound.  Perhaps  it  is  not.  I  shall  not  at- 
tempt to  say. 

I  think,  however,  that  I  have  illustrated  what  I  wish 
to  say  about  emotion.  Not  only  is  it  a  sensation  of  what 
goes  on  in  the  body,  which  might  not  have  to  be  confined 
to  the  body  if  society  had  not  put  a  ban  on  its  being  let 


LOVE  AN  UNACTED  CARESS  293 

out,  but  it  is  a  sensation  of  a  motion  taking  place  in  the 
body  of  which  the  individual  has  no  other  information 
than  through  analysis.  He  looks  upon  it  as  a  strong 
feeling  indefinitely  located  (or  universally  located  all 
over  his  body),  to  which,  however  irrationally,  he  at- 
tributes an  external  origin.  He  thinks  that  the  aggressor 
made  him  angry,  or  that  the  acts  of  the  aggressor  did  so. 
But  it  is  manifestly  not  the  case.  The  aggressor  did  some- 
thing to  which  there  would  have  been  a  similar  retri- 
butive action  had  not  society  restrained  it. 

Love  an  Unacted  Caress 

I  have  used  anger  as  the  illustration  because  the  con- 
sistent carrying  out  of  the  retributive  action  would  not 
so  shock  the  sensibilities  of  the  reader  as  if  I  had  used 
love,  which  is  so  much  more  shocking  than  anger.  If 
I  should  say  that  the  emotion  of  love  is  but  an  unacted 
caress  I  should  have  been  quite  as  logical.  The  aggres- 
sor of  the  preceding  illustration  becomes  the  lover  in  this, 
and  so  inconsistent  is  human  nature  that  I  should  be  con- 
sidered too  suggestive  if  I  carried  out  the  parallel  any 
further. 

We  can  be  more  detailed  in  illustrating  the  emotion  of 
hope.  According  to  the  more  modern  view  hope  would 
be  the  unacted  act  of  any  description,  the  unseen  sight, 
the  unheard  melody,  all  accompanied  by  a  more  or  less 
strong  desire.  And  as  the  unacted  or  unperformed  act 
is  really  a  performed  act,  but  performed  only  within  the 
organism  and  never  let  out  into  the  external  world  of 
reality,  it  is  quite  plain  not  only  that  hope  deferred 
maketh  the  heart  sick  but  that  it  also  makes  the  body  sick 


294    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

as  well,  because  it  is  but  ungratified  desire,  or  desire  for 
outward  experience  gratified  actually  but  gratified  on  the 
body  of  the  desiderant. 

Applying  the  same  test  to  the  emotion  of  sorrow  we 
find  it  to  be  an  unperformed  wrong  or  an  unacted  tragedy. 
From  this  point  of  view  one  cannot  sorrow  long,  -ation- 
ally,  because  one  realizes  that  an  indulgence  in  sorrow 
for  any  length  of  time  is  but  a  rehearsing  of  the  tragic, 
an  acting  of  tragic  scenes  in  our  own  ego.  The  element 
of  desire  is  here  quite  as  inevitable  as  everywhere  else 
in  human  mental  activity.  If  we  sorrow  for  long,  it  is 
only  because  we  have  a  desire  to  be  sorrowful.  It  may 
be  because  we  have  a  desire  for  the  misfortune  to  over- 
whelm some  other,  the  misfortune  indeed  for  which  we 
say  we  are  sorry. 

Naturally  we  should  all  wish  to  be  joyful,  and  the 
emotion  of  joy,  from  the  newer  point  of  view,  is  but 
the  enacting  in  the  internal  world  of  the  body  the  acts 
which  have  been  really  acted  or  which  we  desire  to  act. 
It  is  evident  how  futile  is  joy  of  the  second  type,  that  en- 
acted internally  and  projected  into  the  future.  If  we 
give  ourselves  up  to  this  kind  of  joy  we  become  happy 
but  introverted  idle  dreamers. 

In  all  these  illustrations  we  see  the  two  elements  of  in- 
ternally acted  acts  and  of  desire.  But  normal  desire 
always  is  for  externalization  of  activities.  It  is  necessary 
for  the  organism  perpetually  to  be  taking  things  into 
itself  from  the  outside  and  perpetually  to  be  acting  upon 
the  outside  world.  Presumably  the  man  of  most  con- 
tinuous action  most  consistently  externalizes  all  his  acts 
and  therefore  has  less  emotion  and  less  need  for  emotion 
than  the  inactive  person.    But  this  brings  up  the  thought 


EDUCATION  OF  FEELINGS  295 

that  there  are  many  who  are  continuously  active  and  who 
do  not  do  the  things  which  they  most  desire.  In  this  case, 
of  course,  there  is  a  conflict  between  what  such  a  man 
wishes  to  do  and  what  he  does,  and  the  conflict  not  only 
results  in  the  detriment  to  what  he  is  actually  doing,  be- 
cause he  is  not  doing  it  with  all  his  heart, — ^that  is,  with 
all  his  desire;  that  is,  with  his  whole  body, — but  it  also 
results  in  the  doing  of  what  he  wants  to  do  at  the  same 
time  but  the  doing  of  it  in  an  internal  manner.  We  all 
know  how  many  clerks  and  other  employees  are  doing 
one  thing  and  dreaming  about  another,  to  the  infinite 
harm  of  their  work.  We  do  not,  and  they  do  not,  see 
the  harm  they  are  doing  to  themselves,  but  it  is  evident 
to  all  persons  who  think  beneath  the  surface. 

Education  of  Feelings 

Education  of  the  feelings,  up  to  the  present  time 
neglected  in  favour  of  education  of  the  intellect  and  to 
a  less  degree  of  the  will,  has  been  ignored  partly  from 
conscious  and  partly  from  unconscious  causes.  The  con- 
scious reason  why  the  education  of  the  feelings  has  been 
sidetracked  is  because  it  has  appeared  that  the  feelings 
do  not  play  so  important  a  part  as  the  intellect  in  the 
practical  work  of  the  world.  It  is  now  seen  that  for  a 
continually  increasing  number  of  persons  (neurotics)  the 
feelings  play  a  part  in  their  lives  so  important  as  to  make 
them  unable  to  perform  their  normal  amount  of  work  in 
the  world.  It  is  found  that  in  these  people  the  emotions 
of  pleasure  and  displeasure,  and  the  more  dynamic  pas- 
sions of  love  and  hate,  are,  by  a  twist  that  is  primarily 
intellectual,  transferred  from  ideas  to  which  they  really 


296    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

belong  to  other  Ideas  which  are  not  appropriate.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  there  is  no  feeling  which  Is  not  at- 
tached to  some  Idea,  and  while  there  are  Ideas  which  have 
no  emotional  tone,  there  Is  no  emotional  tone  which  does 
not  belong  to  some  idea.  It  Is  more  or  less  like  shadows 
and  reflections.  There  Is  no  shadow  or  reflection  that 
is  not  the  shadow  of  some  object  or  the  reflection  of  some 
surface.  But  there  are  certainly  objects  which,  In  the 
absence  of  light,  throw  no  shadow,  and  surfaces  which, 
because  of  their  nature,  can  reflect  no  light. 

The  most  recent  psychological  Investigations  have 
established  the  fact  that  a  curious  and  very  important 
transfer  takes  place  between  ideas  and  emotions.  An 
emotion  such  as  grief  Is  felt  first  at  the  loss  of  a  friend 
or  relative  or  lover,  and  when  it  has  become,  or  If  It  does 
become,  too  painful,  It  is  repressed  into  the  unconscious, 
that  is,  the  idea  or  occurrence  which  originally  caused 
the  grief  Is  repressed  and  the  grief  Is  attached  to  some 
other  Idea.  One  reasons  somewhat  as  follows:  This 
thought,  of  having  lost  this  dear  one.  Is  so  painful,  if  I 
could  forget  ever  having  known  or  loved  him,  It  would 
enable  me  to  forget  the  grief  and  be  happy  again.  It 
Is  a  fact  that  the  memory  of  the  loved  person  can  be  re- 
pressed into  the  unconscious,  but  If  the  organic  basis  of 
the  emotion  of  grief  is  deeply  enough  founded  in  the 
system,  the  grief  Itself  will  Immediately  be  linked  up  with 
some  other  occasion,  and  the  individual  suffering  this 
change  is  forced  to  grieve  over  something  else. 

But  the  effects  of  grief  which,  like  a  scar,  persist  and 
are  attached  to  some  other  Idea,  as  If  a  man  should  have 
forgotten  that  his  wound  was  received  In  a  situation  dis- 
graceful to  himself,  and  had  pretended,  and  had  come 


EDUCATION  OF  FEELINGS  297 

to  believe,  that  the  wound  was  received  in  battle  while  he 
was  fighting  bravely. 

The  effects  of  grief  or  anger  are  not  so  persistent  or 
pervasive  as  those  of  love,  and  a  person  who  has  had  a 
disappointment  in  love  is  suffering  from  a  frustration  of 
wishes  that  are  fundamental  in  all  humans.  The  love- 
desires,  denied  their  gratification,  continue  nevertheless 
and  attach  themselves  inevitably  to  another  object  if  the 
first  one  is  taken  away,  and  this  is  the  case  whether  or 
not  these  same  love-desires  have  or  have  not  been  gratified 
before  the  final  denial.  In  fact  it  may  be  said  that  while 
the  wishes  which  form  the  core  of  the  affection  of  love 
may  be  denied  their  gratification  for  days,  months  and 
even  years,  there  is  always  a  substitute  gratification  of 
them  found  in  some  form  or  other.  If  a  man  cannot 
marry  his  adored  one  and  possess  her  fully,  he  will  take 
some  compensatory  gratification  from  her  caresses  which 
convention  does  permit,  and  if  the  engagement  is  pro- 
longed beyond  all  practical  limits,  his  desires  of  full  pos- 
session of  his  fiancee  will  have  to  be  gratified  in  some 
substitute  form  or  he  will  lose  his  health  of  body  or  mind 
or  both. 

This  substitution  of  one  form  of  gratification  of  wishes 
is  sometimes  conscious.  The  man  knows  what  he  is 
doing  when,  inflamed  by  the  beauties  of  his  fiancee,  he 
satisfies  his  gross  sexuality  on  other  women.  But  the  case 
of  women,  or  very  much  repressed  men,  is  different.  Wo- 
men are  brought  up  almost  universally  to  repress  their 
sexuality  in  its  franker  forms.  And  so  successful  is  this 
repression  in  what  we  call  the  most  refined  women,  that 
when  their  fundamentally  sexual  wishes  do  come  into 
consciousness,  they  appear  not  as  sexual  wishes  but  as 


298     THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

wishes,  desires,  trends,  bents  of  character,  or  keen  in- 
terests so  disguised  as  to  be  absolutely  unrecognizable  by 
the  woman  herself.  One  woman's  desire  for  man's  love 
and  for  maternity  was  so  perfectly  repressed  that  she 
developed  a  compulsion  to  take  drugs,  a  feeling  so  strong 
as  to  compel  her  to  take  them  constantly  and  indiscrim- 
inately, regardless  of  their  nature.  The  poisons,  of 
course,  she  took  in  medicinal  doses.  Her  feelings  so  in- 
tense were  transferred  from  where  they  really  belong 
and  where  of  course  they  are  quite  proper,  to  an  idea 
(drugs)  about  which  no  such  insatiable  desires  are 
proper.  Her  tendency  to  take  drugs  was  absolutely  unac- 
countable to  herself  and  to  everyone  else  until  her  mental 
life  was  inquired  into  analytically,  when  the  real  cause 
was  found  and  the  imperativeness  of  the  feehng  departed. 

This  woman  was  one  of  the  numberless  women  who 
as  children  have  had  their  sexual  curiosity  snubbed,  and 
who  have  been  carefully  trained  to  repress  all  sexual  feel- 
ings on  the  ground  that  they  are  base  and  disgraceful. 
Such  women,  in  certain  circumstances,  can  substitute  other 
sensible  and  socially  useful  desires  and  interests  in  the 
place  of  those  which  their  environment  has  suppressed, 
and  can  devote  the  energies  which  these  desires  express, 
to  ends  which  bring  a  wholesome  degree  of  satisfaction, 
to  ends  which,  like  that  of  reproduction,  are  creative,  but 
are  creative  in  other  ways,  such  as  art,  literature  or  educa- 
tion. 

But  there  is  as  yet  no  education  which  takes  into  ac- 
count in  any  degree  the  greatest  of  all  unconscious  de- 
sires— the  sexual.  A  half-hearted  sort  of  instruction  with 
averted  gaze  is  given  in  some  schools,  and  a  few  parents 
make  futile  attempts  to  instruct  their  children  in  sex, 


UNCONSCIOUS  CAUSE  OF  NEGLECT      299 

disqualified  most  of  them  by  the  shame  they  themselves 
feel  about  admitting  the  fact  that  they  had  and  gratified 
sexual  desires. 

But  how  a  boy  or  a  girl  should  feel,  much  less  how 
a  man  or  woman  should  feel  about  the  things  concerning 
which  the  deepest  and  most  pervasive  feelings  are  right 
and  proper,  is  very  rarely  considered  until  it  is  too  late, 
and  the  sexual  feelings  which  should  be  kept  for  sexual 
things,  have  gotten  detached  from  those  primal  experi- 
ences and  transferred  to  incidents  which  never  in  the 
world  should  have  had  attached  to  them  feelings  of  sex- 
ual intensity. 

In  a  sense,  then,  our  civilization  is  based  and  the  vast 
fabric  of  it  is  erected  on  a  sense  of  shame,  for  repressed 
sexuality  works  itself  out  in  excesses  of  every  sort,  in 
enormousness  of  cities,  and  commerce  and  all  the  great 
things  which  so  astound  the  individual  when  he  looks  at 
them  in  large.  It  may  thus  be  that  our  shame-civiliza- 
tion has  resulted  from  a  shunting  ojff  of  power  from  re- 
production of  species  to  production  of  externals  of  life 
and  that,  had  we  had  our  sexuality  less  repressed,  we 
should  have  been  a  simple  people  like  the  Chinese. 

Unconscious  Cause  of  Neglect 

The  unconscious  reason  for  neglecting  the  education 
of  the  emotions,  and  for  the  neglect  of  the  emotions  in 
education,  is  that  an  emotion,  being  a  purely  subjective 
feeling,  does  not  contribute  any  part  to  the  activity  of 
the  individual  that  is  directed  toward  the  production  of 
a  change  in  external  reality,  but  only  contributes  to  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  intensity  of  outward  actions.     It  both  di- 


300    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

minishes  their  effectualness  at  times,  and  at  other  times 
it  increases  the  force  of  the  outward  impetus.  But  emo- 
tional action,  or  action  largely  motivated  by  emotion,  is 
not  in  the  long  run  as  effective  as  that  instigated  by  pure 
desire  for  activity,  for  it  is,  like  emotion  itself,  most 
variable  in  its  quantity,  while  the  action  motivated  by  the 
unconscious  desire  is  normally — that  is,  if  not  blocked — 
continuous. 

The  deeper  emotions  are  therefore  to  be  regarded  as 
an  occasional  accompaniment  of  activity,  mental  or  physi- 
cal, while  the  general  affective  tone  of  well-being  or 
malaise,  pleasure  or  displeasure,  may  be  a  constant  under- 
tone which  seldom  enters  the  focus  of  consciousness.  A 
voluntary  turning  of  attention  to  the  emotions  accom- 
panying a  thought  or  an  action  will  either  cause  the  emo- 
tion to  vanish,  or,  if  it  seems  to  increase  it,  will  do  so 
merely  by  calling  up  other  thoughts  or  evoking  other  ac- 
tions associated  with  that  emotion  before.  Therefore 
the  individual  who  is  not  studying  emotion  from  a  purely 
psychological  point  of  view  is  really  trying  in  a  purely 
introversional  manner  to  use  himself  as  a  source  of  pleas- 
ure. The  same  is  true  of  those  who  make  efforts  to 
maintain  an  unpleasant  emotion.  They  are  using  them- 
selves as  sources  of  pleasure,  only  here  they  are  deriving 
a  masochistic  pleasure  out  of  the  painful  emotions.  This 
is  the  condition  of  women  who  enjoy  going  to  funerals, 
and  crying  about  many  other  things.  They  identify  them- 
selves, as  do  all  masochists,  with  the  person  who  is  getting 
pleasure  out  of  the  situation,  the  aggressor,  and  the  en- 
joyment they  take  in  the  misery  is  that  of  the  person  in- 
flicting the  pain.  The  more  wretched  they  feel,  the  more 
they  enjoy  it. 


UNCONSCIOUS  CAUSE  OF  NEGLECT  301 

It  Is  the  same  with  children  who  exhibit  too  much  emo- 
tion, as  many  do  at  home,  about  the  learning  of  their 
lessons,  and  about  their  performances  in  the  class.  If 
a  child  is  angered  by  being  told  he  has  made  a  mistake, 
or  if  he  shows  too  much  joyous  excitement  over  having 
surpassed  a  competitor,  he  is  too  emotional.  The  actual 
expression  of  the  emotion  is  not  as  significant  as  the  ex- 
istence of  it,  which  the  teacher  may  infer  from  the  child's 
manner.  The  emotionality  of  such  children  is  a  very 
serious  obstacle  to  their  learning  that  for  which  they  come 
to  school.  As  has  been  mentioned  (page  299),  the  emo- 
tion which  upsets  a  child  and  makes  him  unable  to  under- 
stand his  lesson  is  in  reality  a  misplaced  emotion.  It  es- 
sentially belongs  to  the  more  fundamental  desires.  It 
would  be  very  advantageous  if  the  teacher  could  find  the 
opportunity  to  have  a  quiet  talk  with  such  a  pupil,  and 
find  out  indirectly,  by  means  of  inferences  from  his  state- 
ments about  apparently  extraneous  matters,  what  is  the 
real  unconscious  thought  at  the  bottom  of  the  emo- 
tion. 

The  disproportion  between  the  emotion  as  evinced  by 
the  child  and  that  which  would  be  appropriate  to  the 
situation  is  evidence  enough  that  the  emotion  is  misplaced. 
Its  being  misplaced  proves  that  it  belongs  to  an  uncon- 
scious thought,  and  not  to  the  conscious  situation. 
The  child  himself  has  no  knowledge  of  what  the  un- 
conscious thought  is,  and  he  can  never  find  out  for  him- 
self. It  is  also  quite  unlikely  that  the  teacher,  if 
he  found  it  out,  could  communicate  it  to  the  child 
directly.  But  the  good  result  that  will  come  from  the 
quiet  talk  about  the  apparently  extraneous  matters  is  a 
new  attitude  on  the  part  of  each  toward  the  other,  partly 


302    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

at  least  due  to  their  seeing  more  of  each  other.  The 
child  sees  that  the  teacher  is  more  than  a  mere  critic,  and 
the  teacher  that  the  child  is  more  than  a  mere  pupil.  This 
fact  alone  will  reduce  the  incident  that  has  produced  the 
emotion  in  the  child  to  more  nearly  its  proper  proportion. 
If  the  child  could  see  the  incident  in  its  truly  normal  pro- 
portion, he  would  not  be  so  emotional  over  it.  The 
emotion  comes  from  placing  a  really  trivial  act  in  the 
position  of  a  great  tragedy,  which  implies  a  very  narrow 
view  of  the  act. 

As  to  the  extraneous  matters  mentioned  above,  I  should 
here  state  that  no  matters  that  can  be  mentioned  by  the 
child  are  really  so.  He  cannot  talk  of  any  topics  which 
are  not  germane  to  the  situation  over  which  he  became 
too  emotional,  unless  the  interval  between  the  emotion 
and  the  quiet  talk  is  so  long  that  the  thoughts  connected 
with  the  emotion  have  time  to  become  completely  re- 
pressed. The  quiet  talk  too  should  be  mostly  the  child's 
and  not  the  teacher's.  "A  quiet  talk"  from  some  teachers' 
point  of  view  is  really  a  long  lecture  by  the  teacher  on 
the  wrong  done  by  the  child,  his  duty  toward  school  and 
parent,  and  the  necessity  that  such  a  strong  emotion  or 
loss  of  temper  should  never  occur  again.  This  is  not  at 
all  what  I  mean.  On  the  contrary,  the  teacher  should 
show  such  an  interest  in  the  child's  life  out  of  school  as 
to  lead  the  child  to  talk  about  himself,  his  likes  or  dis- 
likes, his  hopes  or  fears,  his  outside  interests,  anything 
in  fact  which  will  be  apparently  not  connected  with  the 
emotion  in  question.  I  say  apparently  for  the  reason 
stated  above  that  nothing  that  the  child  can  say  is  ir- 
relevant, being  connected  with  the  incident  in  question  by 
the  thoughts  in  the  unconscious,  all  of  which  are  pushed 


FUNCTION  OF  THE  EMOTIONS        303 

up  to  consciousness  by  the  same  unconscious  craving  which 
expressed  itself  in  the  over-emotionality. 

The  question  of  over-emotionality  is  important  in 
many  ways.  The  children  who  apparently  have  no  emo- 
tions may  be  supposed  to  have  the  unconscious  variety. 
The  absolutely  unconscious  emotions  probably  have  a 
deleterious  effect,  so  that  it  would  be  better  to  get  such 
children  to  express  some  emotion  openly.  This  is  one 
advantage  of  athletics  in  that  it  lets  out  emotions  in  some 
children  who  may  not  get  the  conscious  emotion  any 
other  way. 

Function  of  the  Emotions 

Have  the  emotions  a  function  and  if  so,  what?  If 
they  are  but  the  entrance  into  consciousness  of  sensations 
having  an  internal  origin,  how  do  they  differ  from  the 
ordinary,  though  not  widely  known,  organic  sensations, 
so-called?  As  listed  by  current  psychology  the  organic 
sensations  are  those  of  motion,  digestion,  including  hun- 
ger and  thirst,  circulation,  respiration,  sex,  and  position, 
also  pain  and  pleasure.  An  emotion  is  any  one  of  these 
mentally  associated,  not  with  anything  internal,  but  always 
with  something  external  or  some  thought  having  an  ex- 
ternal reference.  In  one  sense  an  emotion  is  a  pleasure 
or  a  pain,  really  having  an  internal  cause  but  to  which 
we  attribute  an  external  one.  It  is  thought  popularly  to 
have  an  external  cause  on  account  of  its  being  mentally 
associated  with  an  external  happening.  But  that  does 
not  make  it  really  dependent  on  the  external  thing.  If 
we  always  boil  when  we  hear  certain  words  we  cannot 
truthfully  say  that  the  words  are  the  cause  of  the  boil- 
ing even  though  the  two  occur  regularly  together  in  our 


304    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

experience.  For  It  is  notorious  that  the  regularity  may 
be  broken  at  any  time  and  subsequently  the  relations  re- 
versed. 

Fice  is  a  monster  of  so  frightful  mien 
As  to  be  hated,  needs  but  to  be  seen,  etc., 


but  the  fact  that  this  hate  may  change  to  love  shows  that 
there  is  no  causal  relation  between  the  situation  and  the 
emotion.  Many  other  things  than  vice  may  arouse  at 
first  one  emotion  and  later  on  its  opposite.  But  whether 
the  one  or  the  other,  the  emotion  is  all  the  time  an  in- 
ternal sensation,  for  which  we  blame  or  thank  some  ex- 
ternal situation  or  object.  If  I  lose  some  money,  my 
emotions  are  mentally  associated  with  the  money,  though 
they  emanate  from  my  body.  If  I  see  some  terrible 
thing,  it  is  terrible  to  me  only  by  virtue  of  the  bodily  re- 
action I  unconsciously  make  to  it.  This  reaction  may  be 
instinctive  or  educated,  come  from  instinct  or  environ- 
ment, from  the  unconscious  as  inherited  disposition  or 
as  the  result  of  environment,  but  it  is  still  a  reaction  in 
my  body  and  on  it,  and  not  a  reaction  having  any  immedi- 
ate effect  on  external  reality,  though  it  may  be  said  to 
have  a  remote  effect  on  something  outside  of  myself.  For 
instance,  the  emotions  aroused  in  me  by  being  struck  may 
have  the  result  of  making  me  strike  back. 

The  expression  "  arousing  emotions  "  indicates  that 
the  emotions  are  ordinarily  asleep,  that  is,  in  the  uncon- 
scious, where  possibly  they  really  belong,  and  are  waked 
up  and  brought  into  consciousness  for  the  purpose  of  pre- 
paring us  to  externalize  our  mental  activity.  If  this  pre- 
paration does  what  it  seems  to  do,  it  increases  the  force 


FUNCTION  OF  THE  EMOTIONS        305 

of  the  desire,  or  focusses  it  upon  certain  objects,  thus 
acting,  in  a  sense,  as  a  magnifying  glass  in  changing  the 
relative  size  or  importance  of  some  object  in  the  field  of 
vision.  So  the  emotions  enlarge  the  personal  value  of 
certain  objects,  and  make  now  one  and  now  another  object 
or  situation  have  such  qualities  for  us  that  it  becomes  the 
object  of  our  desire. 

The  unconscious  craving  always  tends  outward,  but  its 
natural  extraversion  is  for  the  purpose  of  getting  its  own 
internal  satisfactions.  What  definite  things  can  satisfy  it 
is  settled  only  by  the  manner  in  which  the  body  reacts  to 
those  things.  Two  main  varieties  in  type  of  bodily  reac- 
tion to  external  stimuli  may  be  called  dilation  and  contrac- 
tion. Dilation  is  expanding  to  take  in,  read  off  by  conscious- 
ness as  pleasurable  emotions,  and  contraction  is  shrink- 
ing, which  has  the  same  effect  both  of  expelling  what  has 
been  taken  in  and  reducing  the  number  of  the  individual's 
points  of  contact  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  But  the 
psyche  can  expand  in  one  direction  and  contract  in 
another,  both  at  the  same  time.  Thus  come  pleasurable 
emotions  connected  with  one  object  and  unpleasant  ones 
with  another.  The  fact  that  we  may  have  opposite  emo- 
tions in  connection  with  one  and  the  same  thing  at  dif- 
ferent times  accords  with  the  fact  that  the  emotions  are 
purely  bodily  sensations,  and  not  some  essential  quality 
of  the  thing.  Essential  qualities  of  things  are  quite  dif- 
ferent in  this  respect  from  the  emotional  aura  through 
which  we  perceive  them.  Stones  are  invariably  hard  and 
standing  water  is  invariably  yielding,  and  their  qualities 
are  constant  for  all  normal  persons.  But  the  emotions 
aroused  by  Plymouth  Rock  or  New  York  Harbour  are 
different  for  different  people,  simply'  because  the  people 


3o6    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

are  different.  Thus  it  is  that  those  who  do  not  perceive 
that  stones  are  hard  and  water  is  liquid  are  called  idiots 
and  those  who  do  not  thrill  at  the  sight  of  historic 
stones  or  waters  are  not.  The  former  perceptions 
cannot  be  taught;  the  emotions  can  be  and  always 
are. 

Emotionality  of  the  individual  can  be  diverted  from  its 
original  connection  with  the  nutritive  and  reproductive 
craving  (where  it  serves  the  purposes  of  self-preserva- 
tion and  race  preservation  respectively),  and  directed  to- 
ward quite  different  activities.  In  fact  emotion  is  the 
best,  if  not  the  only,  means  of  disengaging  the  libido 
temporarily  from  its  natural  animal  object  and  trans- 
ferring it  to  an  artificial  and  human  object.  Not  until 
the  magnifying  glass  of  emotion  is  put  before  an  object 
can  it  be  truly  said  that  the  object  has  any  significant  ex- 
istence for  the  individual.  Emotion  naturally  connected 
by  the  nutritive  and  reproductive  hbido  with  certain  ob- 
jects is  only  through  education,  that  is,  artificially,  asso- 
ciated with  other  objects.  Then  for  the  first  time  do 
those  objects  come  into  being  for  the  particular  indi- 
vidual. 

Thus  it  is  evident  that  the  only  way  in  which  to  cause 
things  to  exist  for  the  developing  mind  of  the  young  per- 
son is  to  insure  their  being  connected  with  an  emotion 
of  the  expansive  type.  If  they  are  by  some  inadvertence 
or  ineptness  on  the  part  of  the  teacher  allowed  to  become 
associated  with  the  opposite  type  of  emotion,  their  pos- 
sible existence  is  annihilated  so  far  as  the  particular  in- 
dividual is  concerned.  Being  connected  with  the  expan- 
sive (pleasurable)  type  of  emotion  is  analogous  to  a 
situation  where  the  given  object  would  cause  in  the  in- 


FUNCTION  OF  THE  EMOTIONS         307 

dividual  a  bodily  reaction  of  the  dilation  or  acceptance 
variety,  although  it  cannot  be  said  in  any  true  sense  that 
the  object  is  the  cause  of  the  emotion.  For  it  is  a  fact 
that  there  are  few  if  any  instinctive  emotions  not  con- 
nected with  the  nutritive  or  reproductive  libido.  Young 
children  have  no  sense  of  disgust,  for  Instance,  for  many 
things  which  adults  have,  and  those  instincts  which  ap- 
parently connect  certain  sensations  with  displeasure,  such 
as  the  sensations  from  wine  and  tobacco,  are  subject, 
through  education,  to  a  complete  reversal.  Wine,  which 
was  unpleasant,  becomes  pleasant,  and  for  a  great  many 
persons  milk,  which  was  the  most  desired  object,  becomes 
one  of  the  least  desired. 

This  dirlglbUIty  of  the  emotions,  this  fact  of  our  being 
able  to  cause  the  reactions  originally  responding  to  one 
kind  of  object  or  situation  to  respond  to  another.  Is  what 
makes  education  possible,  because  it  makes  the  possibility 
that  the  second  kind  of  object  may  have  an  existence  or 
meaning  for  the  individual,  a  meaning  which  otherwise, 
that  Is,  without  this  transfer,  would  not  exist.  The  trans- 
fer, however.  Is  one  of  object  and  not  one  of  response 
to  an  object.  The  response  Is  the  same,  but  the  object 
is  changed.  Here  the  true  nature  of  sublimation  emerges 
into  view.  The  two  phases  of  the  libido.  If  they  adhered 
constantly  to  their  original  objects,  the  objects  with  which 
sex  and  hunger  are  satisfied,  would  be  the  same  in  humans 
as  they  are  in  animals.  But  humans  have  the  privilege 
of  devoting  these  two  phases  of  the  race-preservative  and 
self-preservative  libido  to  other  objects  than  those  in- 
stinctively suggested  by  nature,  and  therefore  the  privi- 
lege of  having  more  objects  in  the  external  world  have 
a  meaning  for  them.     This  meaning  or  significance  is 


3o8    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

a  widening  of  intellectual  vision  through  the  magnifying 
lens  of  emotion,  and  is  in  effect  really  an  amplification  or 
magnification  of  the  individual  through  purely  intellectual 
means. 


An  Absorbing  Interest  in  School  Work 

A  child  may  be  and  must  be  taught  to  take  the  same 
degree  of  pleasure  in  absorbing  knowledge  of  the  objects 
of  the  external  world  and  the  relations  between  them 
that  he  takes  in  eating.  The  nutritive  libido  must  and 
can  be  engaged  upon  a  sum  in  addition  with  the  same 
abandon  with  which  it  is  engaged  upon  the  sucking  of  a 
lollipop.  Where  this  unity  of  effort,  this  focussing  of 
the  entire  libido  upon  the  sum  in  addition  is  not  secured, 
it  is  safe  to  say  the  emotional  magnifying  glass  has  not 
been  used  by  the  teacher  for  the  pupil  or  has  been  un- 
skilfully used.  Mostly  the  teacher  holds  the  glass  up 
before  his  own  eyes  and  tells  the  children  how  large  the 
object  appears  to  him,  not  taking  the  trouble  or  not  being 
mentally  capable  of  finding  out  whether  the  glass  is  in 
front  of  the  child's  eyes  or  not. 

It  will  require  the  teacher  to  have  a  knowledge  of  the 
unconscious  mental  activities  of  the  children,  for  him  to 
know  whether  the  children  have  any  appreciation  of  the 
meaning  of  what  both  teacher  and  children  are  saying. 
Many  times  the  child  will  make  what  sounds  like  an  in- 
telligent remark  and  is  accepted  as  such  by  the  teacher. 
The  next  remark  of  the  child  will,  if  it  is  made,  show 
that  he  completely  misunderstands.  Generally,  however, 
it  is  never  made,  and  the  teacher  loses  the  chance  of  mak- 
ing the  comparison  between  the  two  remarks,  a  compari- 


CONTINUANCE  OF  ACTIVITY  309 

son  which  alone  will  reveal  the  unconscious  thought  con- 
necting the  two  remarks.  This  is  a  crucial  point.  The 
child  should  desire  to  make  more  than  one  remark  about 
the  subject,  just  as  he  naturally  sucks  more  than  once  on 
the  lollipop. 

Continuance  of  Activity 

There  is  the  same  unconscious  motive  possible  for  the 
continuation  of  expression  in  words  as  there  is  for  the 
continuance  of  the  sucking,  but  the  emotion  of  pleasure 
has  not  only  not  been  connected  by  the  teacher  with  the 
verbal  expression,  but  in  most  cases  it  has  been  discon- 
nected. While  the  child  should  desire  to  continue  efforts 
in  the  intellectual  sphere  just  as  he  naturally  pursues 
activities  in  the  absorbing  of  candy,  he  is  prevented  solely 
by  the  conditions  of  his  educational  environment,  by  the 
practically  prohibitive  attitude  of  the  educational  author- 
ities, due  to  their  ignorance  of  the  mechanisms  of  the  un- 
conscious mental  activity.  The  curriculum  is  fixed  and 
the  syllabus  is  prescribed  and  the  work  of  the  educational 
leaders  is  done  and  cannot  be  changed.  The  effect  of  the 
present  academic  environment  must  be  inhibitive  because 
it  has  produced  the  present  results,  comparatively  good 
though  they  may  be,  for  it  is  inconceivable  that  truly  ap- 
propriate emotional  conditions  would  not  allow  the  pupil 
to  devote  as  much  libido  to  school  work  while  he  is  in 
school  as  he  does  to  extra-mural  work  and  play  while  he 
is  out  of  school. 


310    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

Engagement  of  Libido 

The  fact  is  that  the  pupil's  libido  is  not  thus  engaged. 
In  other  parts  of  this  book  I  have  tried  to  show  both  why 
it  is  not  so  engaged  and  upon  what  it  is  engaged,  namely 
upon  unconscious  thoughts  and  actions,  because  of  the 
virtual  prohibition  of  the  connection  between  the  libido 
and  conscious  activities.  In  this  section  I  have  tried  to 
show  the  means,  that  is  the  emotions,  which  may  be  used 
for  the  purpose  of  connecting  the  libido  with  the  school 
activities.  The  school  activities,  in  short,  are  not  and  they 
cannot  be  natural  to  the  child.  In  lieu  of  naturalness, 
their  artificiality,  which  is  essential  because  the  very  aim 
of  education  is  in  a  sense  to  improve  upon  nature,  is  one 
which  will  not  be  completely  successful  unless  all  the 
factors  entering  into  the  situation  are  accounted  for.  Up 
to  date  the  greatest  of  all  these  factors,  the  unconscious, 
has  almost  universally,  through  unavoidable  ignorance, 
been  left  out  of  account. 

Education  of  Emotions 

The  question  then  arises  concerning  the  education  of 
the  emotions  of  the  child  in  the  school.  It  is  an  undoubted 
fact  that  many  if  not  most  teachers,  by  their  wholesome 
attitude  toward  the  work  which  is  to  be  accomplished 
in  the  school,  produce  the  best  atmosphere  for  the  natural 
development  of  the  normal  emotions.  There  is,  in  the 
presence  of  such  a  teacher,  neither  too  much  emotionality 
nor  too  little.  The  work  is  personal  enough,  but  not  too 
personal.  The  appeal  to  the  individual  child  is  suffi- 
ciently intimate,  but  not  too  close.    But  the  conscious  and 


EDUCATION  OF  EMOTIONS  311 

systematic  treatment  of  the  problems  coming  up  in  both 
the  home  and  the  school  has  not  been  accomplished  ac- 
cording to  the  most  modern  information  about  the  facts 
of  emotion.  Indeed  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  problem  of 
the  emotions  of  the  child  has  not  appeared  in  its  present- 
day  light  in  school  education  at  all.  To  go  at  the  thing 
directly  would  be  most  artificial.  For  of  all  mental  states 
an  emotional  one  is  the  one  which  par  excellence  changes, 
and  changes  essentially,  if  attention  is  bestowed  on  it. 

The  education  of  the  emotions,  so  useless  to  attempt 
consciously  in  the  sense  of  arousing  the  consciousness  of 
the  pupil  to  them,  must  be  done  consciously  by  the  teacher 
only.  He  must  be  instructed  in  the  indirect  means  of 
getting  the  best  emotional  atmosphere  in  the  pupils  and 
without  their  knowing  that  they  are  being  led  in  any  direc- 
tion in  this  field.  This  applies  to  pupils  under  the  age 
of  adolescence.  To  those  who  are  passing  through  the 
adolescent  period,  some  knowledge  of  the  fundamental 
sources  of  emotion  should  be  imparted.  This  is  the  only 
place  where  conscious  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  teacher 
should  be  made  to  produce  a  conscious  effect  on  the  pupil. 
How  this  should  be  done  is  a  question  which  cannot  be 
answered  here  for  lack  of  space.  I  have  briefly  indicated 
elsewhere  (page  185)  how  some  of  the  questions  deeply 
affecting  the  emotional  life  of  the  very  young  child  should 
be  answered  by  the  parent.  But  the  emotional  effect  on 
the  child  at  the  time  of  the  occurrence  of  these  questions 
is  almost  nothing.  That  on  the  parent  may  be  very  great, 
according  to  his  or  her  bringing  up,  but  it  has  been  found 
that  questions  of  sex,  when  left  unanswered,  or  answered 
in  the  traditional  mendacious  way,  keep  coming  up  again 
and  again  in  the  child's  mind  even  to  a  date  much  later 


312     THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

than  is  generally  supposed,  while  the  sincere  and  truth- 
ful answers  given  by  the  mother  to  the  very  young  child 
about  the  origin  of  his  life  have  the  effect  of  once  and 
for  all  dismissing  any  doubts  and  queries  from  his  mind, 
and  he  is  enabled  to  go  ahead  with  the  business  of  his 
child's  life  without  the  undue  emotionality  which  is  caused 
by  unsatisfied  curiosity  about  sexual  matters. 

The  Aim  in  Education  of  Emotion 

The  principal  aim  in  the  education  of  the  emotions  Is 
to  get  them  placed  on  the  right  ideas.  A  child  that  weeps 
about  a  lesson,  whether  during  its  preparation  or  after 
its  criticism  by  the  teacher,  is  a  common  example  of  mis- 
placed emotions.  The  deep  emotions  of  the  child  should 
be  aroused  only  about  the  most  vital  things.  And  as  the 
most  vital  things  do  not  normally  concern  the  child,  and 
only  unconsciously  concern  him  at  the  age  of  adolescence, 
the  emotional  child  is  one  who  has  not  had  the  proper 
bringing  up  at  home.  A  child  should  not,  either,  take 
too  much  pleasure  out  of  the  successful  achievement  of 
his  school  tasks.  If  he  does,  it  implies  that  things  which 
so  unduly  excite  him  do  so  because  he  has  been  somehow, 
either  at  home  or  in  the  street,  unduly  excited  sexually. 
For  this  the  teacher  is  of  course  not  responsible,  but  it 
is  the  teacher's  duty  to  recognize  the  fact,  and  act  ac- 
cordingly, which  will  mean  that  he  should,  in  cases  like 
this,  take  particular  care  to  avoid  excitement  of  any  kind 
in  too  great  intensity,  and  endeavour  to  see  that  the 
child's  life  in  school  shall  proceed  as  equably  as  possible. 


SELF-ABUSE  313 

Self -Abuse 

In  short,  only  the  milder  emotions  should  be  aroused 
in  school  life.  In  a  sense,  therefore,  the  education  of  the 
emotions  is  not  a  school  affair,  except  in  the  matter  of 
the  more  superficial  ones.  But  after  the  period  of  adoles- 
cence has  set  in,  the  question  is  one  which  cannot  be  ex- 
cluded. In  the  earlier  years  of  school  education,  the 
training  of  the  emotions  should  therefore  be  negative. 
The  traces  of  major  emotions  which  crop  up  in  school 
should  be  noted  and  the  child  exhibiting  them  given 
special  attention  for  the  purpose  of  reducing  them,  as  a 
surgeon  might  reduce  a  fracture.  For  an  outburst  of 
emotionality  on  the  part  of  a  pupil  is  much  like  a  fracture. 
A  bad  one  is  the  opportunity  for  the  teacher  to  go  at  the 
case  consciously  with  that  pupil  alone,  in  order  to  find 
out  the  true  cause,  and  by  learning  of  it  removing  it, 
particularly  if  it  is  a  case  of  unsatisfied  or  wrongly  satis- 
fied sexual  curiosity,  or  of  masturbation.  The  latter  is 
as  natural  and  inevitable  in  most  children  as  is  the  tend- 
ency on  their  parts  to  think  that  they  themselves  are 
the  only  ones  in  the  world  who  have  discovered  this 
source  of  gratification,  and  to  think  that  because  of  that 
isolation  they  are  outcasts,  weaklings  and  doomed  to  an 
early  death.  As  it  is  a  known  fact  that  self-abuse  is 
common  in  all  children  of  both  sexes  and  at  different 
times  from  the  earliest  infancy,  and  that  a  great  amount 
of  later  neurosis  is  due  to  the  false  ideas  which  the  chil- 
dren get  of  its  injuriousness,  it  is  particularly  important 
for  teachers  as  well  as  parents  to  know  that  the  injury 
received  from  the  indulgence  is  frequently  if  not  always 
less  than  that  received  from  the  child's  brooding  over  the 


314    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

secret  sin,  and  his  generally  erroneous  inferences  about 
its  effects.  Such  children,  if  not  set  straight  about  this 
matter,  either  by  parents,  who  very  seldom  convey  the 
correct  information,  or  by  teachers,  are  the  ones  in  whom 
the  major  emotions  have  been  initiated  too  early  and  at 
the  same  time  not  reduced,  as  the  correct  information 
about  this  matter  generally  has  the  effect  of  doing. 


Mental  Self-Abuse 

While  on  this  topic  of  self-abuse  and  the  heightened 
emotionality  which  it  produces  in  the  life  of  the  child, 
which  some  might  compare  to  the  lighting  of  a  fire  in  a 
place  not  yet  prepared  for  a  fire  of  such  magnitude,  it 
will  be  appropriate  to  call  attention  of  teachers  and  par- 
ents to  the  symbolic  self-abuse  which  is  existent  in  all 
over-intense  emotionality  in  children  (or  adults  too,  for 
that  matter).  A  great  amount  of  pleasure  which  chil- 
dren take  out  of  doing  some  habitual  thing,  such  even  as 
eating  of  candy,  and  sucking  of  lollipops,  chewing  pencils, 
putting  hair  in  mouth,  scratching  head,  stroking  hands 
and  neck,  anything  in  fact  which  becomes  an  accentuated 
mannerism,  is  likely  to  be  carried  on  by  the  pupil  for 
the  gratification  of  an  unconscious  desire  which  is  es- 
sentially masturbatory  in  its  nature.  Such  children  are 
getting  pleasure  out  of  themselves,  and  not,  as  they 
should,  out  of  external  realities.  It  is  very  easy,  compar- 
atively, to  change  the  habits  of  children.  If  allowed  to 
go  on  till  after  adolescence  these  habits  are  very  hard  to 
break  up,  and  they  invariably  indicate  a  certain  degree 
of  introversion.  Teacher  or  parent  must  see  to  it  that 
the  child  is  absorbed  not  in  himself,  for  he  will  get  satis- 


MENTAL  SELF-ABUSE  315 

faction  of  unconscious  desires  somehow,  but  in  the  world 
of  external  reality.  This  is  the  problem  of  the  teacher 
and  parent  with  many  nervous  children.  Some  of  them 
are  showing  a  tendency  to  become  introverted,  the  bash- 
ful, the  diffident,  the  retiring,  the  unusually  quiet  chil- 
dren, the  omnivorous  readers.  They  all  use  their  own 
bodies  or  minds  to  a  certain  degree,  in  lieu  of  the  world 
of  external  reality.  It  is  inevitable  that  this  should  occur 
in  all  persons  to  a  moderate  degree;  it  is  only  the  exces- 
sive or  exclusive  use  of  self  as  the  world  which  demands 
corrective  measures  at  once. 

The  use  of  one's  own  mind  as  a  world  on  which  to  ex- 
pend one's  mental  energy  is,  to  be  sure,  far  the  best  form 
of  self-abuse,  but  is  nevertheless  undoubtedly  a  variety  of 
mental  masturbation.  In  the  ordinary  parlance  day- 
dreaming is  the  term  applied  to  this  mental  activity.  In 
the  analytical  psychology  it  is  called  "  undirected  "  think- 
ing or  "  phantasying."  Its  essential  characteristic  is  the 
securing  of  the  gratification  of  unconscious  wishes  by  the 
easiest  means,  namely  on  the  self.  It  is  the  satisfaction 
of  the  unconscious  desire  in  the  instinctive  way.  It  is 
furthered  by  the  reading  of  light  fiction  and  attendance 
upon  light  drama.  As  the  word  "  day-dreaming  "  in- 
dicates, it  is,  like  the  night  dream,  the  ideal  fulfilment 
of  the  wishes  of  the  unconscious,  voluntarily  allowing 
whatever  thoughts  occur  to  have  free  play  in  the  mind. 
Nalturally  the  tendency  in  some  persons  is  toward  the 
frankly  erotic,  and  in  others  toward  the  slightly  dis- 
guisedly  erotic. 

Every  child  in  every  schoolroom  who  pauses  too  long 
from  the  assigned  work,  and  sits  rapt  in  inward  attention, 
is  excluding  the  external  world,  which  has  become  irk- 


3i6    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

some,  and  Is  retreating  into  self  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  gaining  a  satisfaction  which  it  does  not  know  how 
to  secure  in  the  world  of  external  reality.  This  is  the 
teacher's  chief  concrete  problem,  then :  to  show  how  satis- 
faction can  be  gained  from  the  world  of  work,  from  the 
definite  tasks  allotted  in  the  schoolroom,  and  from  the 
interplay  of  personality  between  pupil  and  classmate  and 
teacher.  The  pupil's  gaze  is  to  be  directed  outward  in- 
stead of  inward,  and  forward  instead  of  backward. 

Forward  instead  of  backward  here  has  a  double  sense, 
for  the  pupil,  in  introverting,  as  this  selfward-directed 
activity  is  called,  is  regressing  mentally  to  the  age  in 
which  the  satisfactions  are  normally  taken  out  of  self 
and  not  out  of  the  external  world,  namely,  the  age  of  in- 
fancy. This  is  not  to  say  that  regression  is  a  defect  at 
all  times,  for  the  most  active  minds  have  their  normal 
periods  of  regression;  for  instance,  the  noted  men  who 
occasionally  relax  in  reading  dime  novels  or  other  cheap 
literature.  The  universal  normal  regression  is  of  course 
sleep,  where  the  individual  goes  back  into  pre-natal  obli- 
vion and  opens  the  door  for  any  kind  of  phantasy. 

Education  of  the  Wilt 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  newer  psychology  there 
Is  little  to  be  said  about  the  will.  I  have  spoken  about 
the  battle  of  wills  which  takes  place  occasionally  In  the 
schoolroom.  The  same  frequently  takes  place  In  the 
home  between  the  parent  and  the  child.  The  fact  of  two 
human  wills  opposing  each  other  has  an  aspect  of  a  de- 
gree of  economic  folly  that  Is  almost  pathetic  to  witness. 
When  we  multiply  this  war  of  individual  wills  Into  a  war 


EDUCATION  OF  THE  WILL  317 

of  nations  like  the  present,  we  see  very  clearly  the  un- 
necessary destruction  which  it  causes.  But  in  the  single 
struggle  between  two  wills,  when  it  is  about  the  will  alone 
and  not  about  something  toward  which  the  will  is  directed, 
when,  in  short,  one  will  is  directed  against  the  other 
will,  there  is  a  displacement  of  libido  which  is  extremely 
unfortunate  for  humanity  as  a  whole.  For  of  the  two 
directions  of  the  individual  will — namely,  the  direction  of 
it  upon  another  will  or  upon  a  thinff  in  external  reality — 
there  is  no  question  whatever  as  to  the  greater  advantage 
of  directing  the  will  toward  things  over  directing  it  against 
persons. 

With  respect  to  the  education  of  the  will,  the  newer 
psychology  teaches  that  the  will  does  not  have  to  be 
educated  or  trained  any  more  than  a  stream  of  water  or 
a  pressure  of  steam,  implying  that  what  is  called  weak- 
ness of  will  is  really  a  blocking  or  damming  of  the  libido 
by  the  inhibitions  caused  by  the  complexes,  and  that,  in- 
stead of  training  the  will,  as  a  weak  muscle  is  strength- 
ened by  exercise,  the  libido  has  to  be  liberated  and  it  will 
exert  itself  to  its  maximum,  like  any  other  unimpeded 
natural  force  but  on  socially  approved  objects. 

Those  children  in  school  who  appear  to  have  weak 
wills,  if  they  be  not  of  a  congenitally  weak  physical  con- 
stitution, have  naturally  just  as  strong  a  will  as  the  most 
assertive  and  obstinate  child,  but  their  will,  or  more  ac- 
curately, their  libido,  has  been  blocked  by  some  fear  or 
other  inhibition,  which  is  caused  either  by  a  guilty  con- 
science about  sexual  matters,  generally  utterly  unwar- 
ranted guilty  feelings,  or  by  one  of  the  phases  of  the 
family  complex.  So  it  would  be  particularly  happy  if, 
through   the    teacher's    knowledge    of    the    unconscious 


3i8    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

wishes,  that  are  working  in  such  a  tangled  way  in  the 
hinterland  of  the  pupil's  mind,  the  child's  fears  could  be 
removed  and  he  could  be  given  the  confidence  to  go  ahead 
full  speed.  As  a  very  concrete  instance  of  a  parental 
influence  operating  against  school  work  I  might  mention 
an  almost  pathetic  child  in  the  first  primary  grade  who 
could  not  handle  a  pencil.  His  father,  in  order  to  get 
fun  for  himself  out  of  Johnny's  first  day  in  school,  had 
told  the  boy  that  he  had  better  look  out  for  the  pencil 
because  it  would  bite  him,  and  hence  the  poor  child's  ef- 
forts to  write  were  impeded  by  his  thought  that  he  had 
to  handle  it  most  gingerly.  The  inability  of  most  chil- 
dren to  do  well  in  any  given  study  is  determined  entirely 
by  the  unconscious  preconceptions  which  they  have  formed 
about  the  difficulty  or  impossibility  of  their  being  able  to 
reach  a  standard  set  for  them,  and  not  because  of  any 
"  weakness  of  will "  or  stupidity  in  understanding  the 
subject.  It  will  be  different  in  different  cases.  What  the 
teacher  has  before  him  is  generally  not  a  weak  will  but 
an  obstructed  will,  and  it  takes  an  analytical  examination 
of  the  individual  pupil  to  get  at  the  bottom  of  the  trouble 
and  remove  the  obstruction.  This  cannot  be  attained 
without  the  previous  establishment  of  a  rapport  between 
himself  and  the  pupil,  analogous  to  that  existing  between 
the  physician  and  the  patient  in  the  medical  psychoanaly- 
sis. It  implies  a  transference  of  the  right  kind  on  the 
part  of  the  pupil  toward  the  teacher,  which  cannot  be 
produced  unless  the  teacher  is  able  to  read  below 
the  superficial  manifestations  of  the  pupil's  conscious 
thoughts  and  acts. 

Here,  then,  is  the  teacher's,  as  well  as  the  parents',  real 
opportunity.    The  thoughtful  parent,  who  has  the  leisure 


SUMMARY  319 

and  the  interest,  will  occasionally  study  the  unconscious  of 
the  child,  when  his  or  her  attention  has  been  called  to 
the  existence  of  such  a  thing.  It  is  the  duty  of  the 
teacher,  and  the  sole  art  of  teaching,  to  produce  an  effect 
upon  the  pupil  without  the  pupil's  knowing  how  it  was 
done.  To  this  end  the  teacher  will  have  to  gain  the  con- 
fidence of  the  pupil  to  the  extent  of  the  pupil's  telling  the 
teacher  a  great  many  of  his  thoughts  on  subjects  ap- 
parently most  remote  from  the  subject  of  study  in  which 
the  pupil  appears  to  be  weak  in  understanding  or  in  will. 
In  these  talks  the  child  will,  in  most  cases,  reveal  to  the 
discerning  teacher  acquainted  with  the  mechanisms  of 
the  unconscious,  the  real  cause  of  the  apparent  weakness 
of  will,  or  of  the  seeming  lack  of  intelligence.  The 
teacher  will  discover  the  true  reason  why  the  unconscious 
of  the  child  is  unwilling  to  see  or  understand,  or  thinks 
he  is  unable  to  do  so,  and  will  be  able  in  many  cases  to 
throw  a  bright  light  into  regions  which  were  for  the 
pupil  dark  before. 

Summary 

Emotion  is  described  as  the  perception  of  a  stimulus 
that  originates  within  the  body,  but  which  has  a  closer 
relation  than  other  sensations  so  originating  with  the 
apparent  desires  of  the  individual.  While  it  originates 
within  the  organism  it  is  referred  outward,  as  ordinary 
feelings  of  discomfort  are  not,  and  is  associated  with 
some  more  or  less  definite  idea.  The  existence  of  re- 
pressed emotions  suggests  that  emotion  is  a  constant 
factor  of  all  mental  activities,  which  appears  in  con- 
sciousness with  greater  or  less  intensity  according  to  cir- 
cumstances.    Emotion  is  likened  to  a  coloured  medium 


320    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

through  which  the  external  realities  are  perceived.  Ex- 
treme idealism  regards  even  the  external  world  as  a 
part  of  the  ego.  Anger  is  shown  to  be  a  form  of  self- 
castigation,  love  an  unacted  caress,  and  analogous  state- 
ments are  made  about  other  emotions.  The  education  of 
the  feelings  is  based  on  the  fact  that  the  idea  originally 
associated  with  the  emotion  may  be  changed  for  another 
idea.  The  function  of  the  emotions  in  school  is  to  fur- 
ther continuity  of  activity,  the  education  of  the  emotions 
in  school  should  be  indirect  and  the  unduly  deep  ones  re- 
duced wherever  possible.  The  connection  between  emo- 
tion and  the  sexual  life  of  the  child  brings  up  the  ques- 
tion of  physical  self-abuse,  the  dangers  of  which  are  ex- 
plained and  the  question  of  mental  self-abuse,  which  is 
too  common  among  children  in  forms  least  suspected  by 
teacher  and  parent.  The  education  of  the  will  is  merely 
the  removing  of  obstacles  existing  in  the  unconscious. 


CHAPTER  IX 

CONCLUSION.      MEDICAL  ORIGIN 

A  SPECIAL  significance  attaches  to  the  fact  that  the 
strictly  scientific  method  of  studying  the  unconscious  has 
come  from  medical  research.  The  first  authoritative 
result  was  reached  by  a  neurologist  in  searching  for  the 
causes  of  a  nervous  disease.  Having  found  it  in  the  un- 
conscious wishes,  the  unperceived  tensions  existing  in  the 
mind  of  his  patient,  he  was  quick  to  see  the  application  of 
his  discovery  to  all  phases  of  mental  life,  normal  as 
well  as  abnormal.  For  the  only  difference  between 
normal  and  abnormal  is  the  fact  that  the  so-called 
abnormal  person  finds  a  difficulty  in  living  in  society. 
Society  shows  him  up  for  abnormal  only  by  setting  stand- 
ards of  adaptation  to  which  he  is  for  some  reason  unable 
to  measure  up. 

Education  is  the  conscious  effort  on  the  part  of  society 
to  lift  as  many  individuals  as  possible  up  to  the  standard 
which  it  has  set.  Therefore  any  knowledge  of  the  rea- 
sons why  some  do  not  naturally  rise  to  or  above  such 
standards  is  welcome,  no  matter  what  the  source.  And 
any  knowledge  of  the  means  for  such  an  uplifting  of 
the  individuals  who  are  below  the  average  is  doubly 
welcome. 

In  this  connection  it  may  be  of  interest  to  give  a  slight 

321 


322    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

idea  of  the  methods  pursued  by  the  medical  psychologists 
in  the  cure  of  certain  nervous  diseases. 


Medical  Psychoanalysis 

Those  physicians  who  confine  their  practice  exclusively 
to  cases  where  psychoanalysis  is  available  for  the  cure 
of  diseases  of  a  nervous  character  have  summed  up  their 
work  by  saying  that  at  bottom  it  is  really  a  process  of 
educating  the  adult  to  adapt  himself  to  the  requirements 
of  hiS  environment,  an  adaptation  which  has  been  unsuc- 
cessful. The  failure  to  adapt  has  been  the  cause  of  the 
disease  which  the  patient  has  sought  the  physician  for  the 
purpose  of  curing.  The  methods  of  these  physicians, 
which  in  the  rarest  cases  include  the  prescription  of 
drugs,  vary  within  certain  limits,  as  it  must  according  to 
the  mental  development  of  the  physician  himself.  Osten- 
sibly the  method  is  to  evoke,  by  patient  listening,  the 
apparently  trivial  thoughts  which  the  patient  may  have 
during  the  hours  which  he  spends  with  the  physician,  so 
that  the  general  trends  of  the  unconscious  craving  may  be 
diagnosed,  and  the  appropriate  counsel  given.  Some 
physicians  give  advice  about  concrete  matters  concerning 
the  patient  at  every  sitting,  thinking  that  otherwise  the 
seance  may  have  no  point  for  the  patient,  while  others 
will  receive  and  listen  to  the  patient  for  weeks  at  a  time 
without  offering  a  single  suggestion,  on  the  theory  that 
knowledge  which  is  applied  by  one  person  to  the  surface 
of  another  is  merely  superficial  and  has  no  dynamic  value, 
which  is  gained  solely  by  the  patient's  making  his  own 
inferences.    In  one  sense,  as  has  been  already  said,  it  is 


MEDICAL  PSYCHOANALYSIS  323 

a  physical  impossibility  to  tell  anybody  anything,  parti- 
cularly about  himself. 

But  the  general  aim  is  to  educate  in  the  sense  of  bring- 
ing out  all  the  capabilities  of  the  patient  in  any  and  every 
line,  so  that  after  mature  reflection,  and  the  necessary 
spiritual  growth,  which  time  alone  can  effect,  he  will  be 
in  a  position  to  make  the  correct  reactions  to  the  stimuli 
which  constitute  his  environment. 

The  gist  of  the  lesson  which  the  patient  learns  is  what 
he  is  actually  doing  in  his  everyday  life,  for  on  a  knowl- 
edge of  what  he  is  doing  must  be  based  the  determina- 
tion to  do  what  he  ought  to  do.  It  is  always  found  that 
the  patient  is  unwittingly  doing  something  that  is  not  ap- 
proved either  by  himself  or  society.  What  he  should 
do  is  what  society,  in  the  broadest  sense  of  that  term,  re- 
quires of  him.  He  may  think  that  he  is  doing  exactly 
what  he  is  required  to  do,  but  in  this  case  he  is  de- 
ceiving himself  and  the  self-deception  has  to  be  revealed 
to  the  patient  by  the  physician.  This  implies  that  con- 
science is  the  determining  factor  in  the  origin  of  many 
diseases  of  nervous  character,  the  conflict  between  what 
the  patient  thinks  he  is  doing  and  what  he  thinks  he  ought 
to  do  being  the  crux  of  the  whole  situation.  When  the 
patient  Is  deceiving  himself  both  about  what  he  ought 
to  do  and  about  what  he  is  doing,  it  is  evident  that  he 
is  far  from  adapting  himself  to  his  environment  In  the 
most  constructively  social  way. 

A  concrete  illustration  *  of  the  way  in  which  the  pa- 
tient suffers  from  a  conflict  between  himself  and  society 
is  that  of  the  woman  who  became  a  nervous  wreck  from 
thinking  that  the  people  of  the  suburban  town  where  she 

♦Frink,  Morbid  Fears  and  Compulsions,  page  157. 


324    THE  CHILD'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MIND 

lived  after  the  death  of  her  husband  were  unfriendly  and 
critical  to  her  because  they  thought  she  was  a  designing 
widow,  and  was  making  eyes  at  every  available  man. 
She  had  to  be  taught  that  in  the  first  place  she  was  actually 
at  heart  what  is  called  a  designing  widow,  as  she  really 
wished  to  get  married  again;  and  then,  on  top  of  that,  she 
had  to  be  taught  that  it  was  no  crime  to  get  married 
again,  anyway.  This  rather  amusing  way  of  putting 
what  was  a  source  of  intense  conflict  to  the  unhappy  wo- 
man is  a  good  instance  of  how  the  aim  of  psychoanalysis 
is  to  make  us  see  ourselves  as  others  see  us  with  the  im- 
plication that  when  we  do  we  shall  react  as  others  do  in 
the  same  circumstances,  and  that  if  we  do  so  act  we  shall 
be  free  from  the  conflict  which  is  the  cause  of  our  misery. 
And  our  misery,  however  purely  mental  it  may  have  been 
in  the  beginning,  sooner  or  later,  if  our  warped  view  of 
ourselves  and  our  relations  with  others  is  not  corrected, 
will  become  a  physical  ill,  which  will  respond  but  weakly 
to  physical  means  of  remedy,  as  it  is  really  of  mental 
origin  and  can  be  eradicated  only  from  the  mental 
side. 

So  that  the  aim  of  psychoanalysis,  whether  it  be  the 
corrective  work  of  the  physician  or  the  educator,  is  the 
same.  It  is  to  unite  the  individual  with  his  kind.  It  may 
be  said  that  there  are  many  people  in  the  world  who  are 
perfectly  united  with  their  kind  but  who  are  not  educated. 
But  it  will  have  to  be  admitted  that  such  people  are  really, 
in  a  broad  sense,  better  educated  than  the  college  man 
with  the  highest  degree,  who  cannot  in  spite  of  it  be  happy 
himself  or  live  happily  with  his  neighbours.  He  may  be 
educated,  but  he  has  only  a  specialized  form  of  training 
and  has  not  the  education  which  is  of  most  worth. 


MEDICAL  PSYCHOANALYSIS  325 

I  hope  that  if  I  can  call  the  attention  of  my  fellow- 
teachers  to  the  very  much  more  social  way  of  looking  at 
their  calling  which  the  psychoanalytic  view  presents,  I 
shall  be  able  to  make  the  work  of  the  teacher  more  effi- 
cient, his  relations  with  parents  and  children  more  profit- 
able and  his  position  in  the  present  social  organism  more 
valued  than  it  is. 


FINIS 


INDEX 


Abberations,  mental,  X33 
Acceptance,  65 
Act  and  word,  43 
Activity,  conscious,  4 
Acts,  symptomatic,  51,  83 

thoughtless,  200 
Aim  of  Education,   58,   59,   63,   67, 

71,   73.   75.   85,    114,    126,    127, 

151,  172,  189,  196,  224,  225,  232, 

312 
Ambivalence,  93,  134,  135 
Amplitude  of  consciousness,  225 
Analogy,  140 
Anger.  94,  291,  292 
Antivivisectionism,  91,  143,  149 
Anxiety,  139 
Art,  150 
Attraction,  22 
Authoritative   attitude  of  teachers, 

250 
Aversion,  144,  240 
Aware,  becoming,  76 

Beauty,  159 
Blame,  124 
Blunder,  5 
Bully,   156 

Censor,  82,  107 
Children,  neurotic,  61 
Compensation,  91,  130,  134,  202 
Competition,  90 
Complex,  82,  183,  317 
Confidence,  174 
Conflict,  53,  275,  295,  324 
Conscience,  9,  135,  323 
Conscious    and    unconscious    inter- 
play, 49 

action,  52 

control,  57 
Consciousness,  entrance  of,  in  evo- 
lution, 74 

stream  of,  137 


Conservation  of  energy,  17 
Control,  instinctive,  i8 
Craving,  189 
Crawford,  32 
Creation,  of  mind,  181 

reproductive,  85,  196,  239 
Creativeness,  24 
Criticizing,  158,  228 
Curiosity,  sexual,  184 

Day-dreaming,  189 

Democracy  in  education,  214 

Deportment,  160 

Descriptive  psychology,  100 

Desire,  15,  139,  144,  226 

Dewey,   58 

Directed  thinking,  128,  153,  188,  225 

Disguise  of  wishes,  16 

Dishonesty,   i6o 

Dislike,  20 

Displacement,  136,  138,  155,  317 

Doubt,  i88 

Dream,  46,  82 

Dynamic  psychology,  100 

Eccentricity,  140 
Education,  aim  of,  see  Aim 

of  the  future,  86 
Efficiency,  29 
Emotions,  94,  96,  131,  141,  282,  295, 

303,  306,  310 
Energy,  conservation  of,  17 
Environment,  224 
Epiphenomenon,  76 
Error,  24 

Estimation,   unconscious,   19 
Excuses,  II 

Exhibitionism,  92,  146,  148,  203 
Extraversion,  305 

Fate  attitude,  242 
Fault-finding,  158 
Favourite  children,  176 


327 


328  INDEX 


Fear,  94,  183,  226,  277 
Feminists,  142 
Flight,  127 
Foreconscious,  49 
Freud,  261 
Furtive  glance,  20,  188 

Gratification  of  unconscious  wishes, 

17 
Grief,  296 

Habit  of  victory,  39 
Hate,  95 
Homosexual,  22 
Hope,  298 

Idealism,  288 
Identification,  in,  127 
Image,  mental,  102 
Impressions,  early,  173 
Inaccessible  children,  68 
Inconsistency,  73 
Individual  attention,  129 
Infantility,  92,   134 
Inferiority,  201 
Instincts,  195 
Interest,  244,  308 

Interplay  of  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious, 55 
Introjection,  120 
Introversion,  190,  288,  300,  314 
Irrelevance,  302 
Irritation,  126 

James,  William,  287 
Joy,  294 

Libido,  89,  136,  137,  306,  307,  308, 

310,  317 
Lie.  35 
Logic,  36 

Love,  95,  99,  126,  293,  297 
Lynching,  143 

Maieutic  method,  251 
Masochism,  89,  266,  300 
Masturbation,  313 

mental,   314,   315 
Mechanism  of  blame,  124 
Mechanisms,  99 

Medical    origin   of   psychoanalysis, 
321 


Mental  vs.  conscious,  13  « 

Methods  more  elastic,  242 
Mind,  creation  of,  181 
Misinformation,  187 
Mother-infant  attitude,  241 

Negative,  psychological,  37 
Neurotic,  60,  238,  295 
Normal,  62 
Numbers  as  states  of  mind,  27 

Omission,  unconscious,  7 
Only  child,  176 
Onomatopoeia,  28,  108 
Over-compensation,  140 
Over-emotionality,  303 

Pain,  90,  123 

Parents,  education  of,  114 

influence  of,  176  ? 

Partial  trends,  89 
Perfection  of  nature,  223 
Permutations,  40,  42 
Personal  act,  the  most,  13,  18  1 

Phantasy,  80,  315 
"  Phantoms  of  past  pins,"  275 
Phobia,  17 
Piano  playing,  69 
Primeval  standards,  22 
Productive  creation,  196,  239 
Projection,  n8,  15.6 
Psychical  environment,  224 
Psychoanalysis,    point  of   view  of, 
4,  286 

medical,  65,  237,  279,  321,  324 
Psychological  negative,  37 
Psychology,   130 

Question,  229,  251,  264 
"Quiet  talk,"  302 
Quiz,  228 

Rapport,  228 

Rationalization,  163 

Reality,  206,  210,  212,  240 

Recitation,  216 

Regression,  316 

Relations    between    thoughts     and 

things,  25 
Religion  and  sex,  236 
Repression,  60,  65,  208,  283 
Reproach,  156 


INDEX 


329 


Reproduction,  106 
Reproductive  creation,  196,  239 
Resistance  and  transference,  248 
Reverie,  80 
Rhythm,  28,  205,  255,  258 

Sadism,  89,  143,  146 
Selection  of  words,  26 
Self-abuse,  313 

mental,   314 
Self   and   world,    123,    126 
Sex  and  religion,  236 
Sexual  curiosity,  184,  298,  312 

education,  298 
Similarity,  109 
Society,  148 
Socratic  method,  251 
Sorrow,  294 

"  Spirit  is  willing,"  33  ff. 
Split  between  wishes,  19 
Statement,  35 

Sublimation,  89,  146,  19$,  227,  307 
Substitution,  136,  297 
Superiority,  no 
Surgery,  143 
Symptomatic  acts,  51 

Teacher,  future  function  of,  234 
Tensions,  20,  72,  191,  205,  255,  257 
Thought,  50,  106 
Thoughtless  acts,  200 
Thoughts,  source  of,  80,  81,  197 


Transference,  248,  270 

negative,  275 
Transformation,    adaptive,  of    en- 
ergy, 151,  189 
Trends,  partial,  89 
Truth,  159 

Unconscious,  the,  49,  105 

action,  53 

antagonism,  228,  229,  267 

desire,  143,  226 

emotions,  23 

estimation,  19 

extent  of,  14 

factor,  13,  23,  57 

fluidity  of,  5 

idea,  199 

mental  activity,  2 

not  oriented,  161 

permutations,  40 

resistance,  249 

thought,  52,  57 
Unconscious  wish,  86,  262,  264,  266 

wishes,  gratification  of,  17,  168 
for  creation,  84 
as  tensions,  191 

Wells,  H.  G.,  151,  261 
Will,  316 

Wish,  8,  16,  50,  72,  252,  260 
Wish  psychology,  15 
World  as  part  of  body,  290 


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